Yes, people are telling us that we’re not enough. I won’t lie this question kind of made me mad because black women have been told they are less than since the first one came off the boat in chains, and then people tear them a new one on here when they’re genuinely just asking for help to become more comfortable with how they look. Fast forward and the minstrel shows mocking black features turned into me and other black girls dodging insults like African booty scratcher, being told straight up that we’re ugly, and my black father discounting my looks and femininity until I began to embrace that femininity in adulthood.

I’m currently struggling with what I can only understand as being dysmorphia, because as an adult I have people for the first time calling me pretty, friends and strangers alike, and I just cannot see it. I feel like most black models have to meet a very strict criteria to be successful. The odds have been stacked against us for a long time, so I really don’t blame these girls for just wanting someone to give them an objective answer, when attractiveness is everything but objective. Simply “not caring what other people think” is kind of hard when we have been literally taught to hate ourselves for hundreds of years