Bullied For Her Complexion, Social Media Helped This 10 Yr-Old Learn To Embrace Her Beautiful Dark Skin

If you were blessed to have been born with with deeply melanated skin, it’s likely you have, at some point, endured bullying or teasing because of your complexion. It’s no secret that darker skin, in the western world, is often viewed as unattractive.

While there has been some improvement in the perception of dark skin in recent years, even today, children are still being targeted and made to feel uncomfortable in the skin they are in.

Snoop Dogg’s daughter discussed her experience in this post HEREsnoop-dogg-daughter

Kimora Lee Simmons’s son has even expressed his disdain for his complexion in this post HERE.

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Ten year-old, Kheris Pollard, like others before her has endured her fair share of bullying. At one point, she was attending a school with only 4 other black children, which resulted in a lot of unwanted negative attention regarding Kheris’s dark skin. According to Kheris, even one of her teachers made her feel badly about her complexion. Kheris told Buzzfeed that her teacher asked students to draw themselves, then handed her a black crayon.

“I’m not that dark… I’m brown,” Kheris told her.

The teasing began to really take a toll on Kheris’s  self esteem. Kheris’s older sisiter, Taylor, 22, told Buzzfeed News

“She started to notice she was different…She would cry a lot, and talk about how she doesn’t like her skin tone.”

So Kheris’s mother, Erika Pollard, decided to transfer Kheris to another school with more diversity, but the bullying didn’t stop. Taylor told Buzzfeed:

“A couple of girls at school would tease her about being skinny and about her skin tone, but it’s weird because it came from people who are black as well,” Taylor said.

Taylor, clearly one of  Kheris’s biggest fans, took matters into her own hands, and posted this picture of her sister, which has since gone viral.

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And just like that Kheris became a social media hit.  The picture got thousands of retweets and words of encouragement.  The kind words also worked their magic on Kheris.

“She was obsessed with the comments,” Taylor said. “So many people’s comments gave her a positive outlook on her skin. It gave her reassurance.”

“I was overwhelmed,” Kheris said. “There were so many comments that they loved my skin and my hair.”

Taylor and her mother have since created a Twitter account for Kheris. The pair continue to manage and closely monitor the account, sharing pictures of Kheris and hoping to inspire and uplift other children.

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Kheris, Her Mom, and her Sister

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“I told Kheris now that she has the attention she should use it as a positive outlet,” Taylor said. “I think it’s important to use the platform to positively influence other kids.”

For more Kheris follow her account HERE.

 

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3 Comments

  1. Sarah Horsford says:

    Such an incredibly beautiful girl. She will be a model someday. Or whatever she wants to be!

  2. Wonderful article, thank you so much for sharing this, it will help so many of our little queens and big queens too, because some of our big queens are still suffering from self shame of their skin. Things like this make Snow people nervous ! If we show self love it will lead to our unity and they can’t have that.

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