Ever since my life began, society has taught me to believe that only girls like this are beautiful:

Everyone makes me believe that when summer comes, my hair should look like this:

I’ve always been told that I need to dress like this to be seen as attractive:

They always said that being light-skinned, blonde, and having bright blue eyes was what would make me happy.

But I’m not like that.

My skin is the color of milky coffee, my eyes the color of a Hershey’s chocolate bar, and my hair is the color of burnt toast, a deep, grudging brown. I wore glasses and turtlenecks and skirts that went past my knees. I had braces, but I still decided to smile.

I was too loud, too intelligent, too tall, too confident. Society taught me that only girls who looked a certain way got to be those things, and I was not that.

And that is something I have yet to overcome.