A thread on Colorism and Miyo!

Colorism has played a very nasty part in the creation of many of my characters. It wasn't until a couple years ago, with the influence of someone who used to be a friend, that I found my confidence to write brown and black characters.

If you knew me during my early DA days or even worse, my early Tegaki days? I VERY rarely drew characters with black or brown skin. I had so many pale, white, porcelain skinned characters because I had hopelessly convinced myself that that was the 'norm'.

And that's probably really weird coming from me, right? Cuz if any of you know me, you know that I'm a black trans artist. And ALL I wrote were white or white-passing cis women. Why? Because I was raised around whites and fostered my personality and who I was to fit into that.

Being told I was an Oreo ( black on the outside, white on the inside ) felt like a compliment, not an insult. Being told I had such a 'way with words' meant that I was fitting in with the nice, kind whites that I grew up with, not the loud, hostile blacks all my friends avoided.

It wasn't until I was out of college that I realized what a crock of absolute horseshit that was, how I was demeaning and hating my own skin because it was darker than everyone else around me who deemed pale and perfect to be the standard of 'beauty'.

I was young and stupid.

But I had spent ALL of my life around white people. I was raised in lower-middle class areas where I was surrounded by NOTHING but white people and I was the odd one out for years. I didn't want to be different. I didn't want to be teased. I didn't want to be seen as a 'threat'.

So I bottled all of that ugly shit inside; all of the anger, the confusion--I tucked it all deep inside and pretended to be like everyone else. I didn't understand why the blacks from middle and high school would give me dirty looks or ignore me but I understand now.

That manifested in how I saw both myself and my creations.

Don't believe me? Here, take a look at the progression of my persona. Not only does it represent my gradual transitioning, it also showcases the AWFUL colorism I felt toward myself and my creations.

I have so many characters from my earlier years that are pale or white. So, so, SO many. So many that I was often asked if I ever even MADE dark skinned characters. There was a point in time when I excused my lack of black characters to not being able to 'color them' correctly.

It took a whole lot of unlearning. It took a whole lot of listening. It took a whole lot of digging for me to realize that my skin was not ugly and that every single one of my people were beautiful for the skin that they have. Sometimes, even now--I find myself slipping.

Where internal colorism and self-hatred would have me creating a character that is pale, perfect and doll-like because I know that is perceived as 'beautiful'. The PALE. The EURO-CENTRIC FEATURES. The QUIET, DOLL-LIKE appearance.

That is exactly why I don't.

There are so many aesthetic blogs, ball jointed dolls, hentai, moodboards, pintrests that will feed the narrative of this pale smooth skinned, soft spoken, slender white woman as pretty, soft, to be protected and cherished because she is small, fragile and beautiful.

The 'lamb'.

And Never. EVER. EVER!!!!!
Will you see that EXACT SAME AESTHETIC AND PORTRAYAL on a black woman. Never.

That fucked me up. Real, real, real bad. For years. For so many fucking years that shit hurt so deep it drove me to wonder why we weren't romanticized in the same way.

It's still too raw for me to go too deep into it... But I still have work to do for myself. I still default to lighter-skinned characters because that was my norm and I try to retroactively correct that as I go on in my life.

I've considered going back and retconning most or the majority of my earlier OCs to be black or brown and honestly? I don't even want to do that. I just want to sell/get rid of them at this point because all I can remember is how much it aches to have hated myself SO much.

I don't really know where I'm going with this anymore. Just... Understand this internal bias took years of submersion and microaggressions from a child to a college graduate. It's like brain washing. It's so hard to unlearn and to be better about but fuck if I'm trying anyway.

It's hard but I deserve it. I deserve to be kind to myself, my creations--and I deserve not to look in the mirror and wonder why I'm just 'pretty' and not 'beautiful' like all the other fictional, ethereal white women toted like goddesses.

[ End Thread ]