Chocolate

My daughter came from school. I was so excited to see her reaction about the first day . She just opened the door, ran to me and hugged me tight. Her eyes were so red. Apparently she was crying for a while. I couldn’t understand what she was saying until she said “chocolate”

I was about to laugh but I asked her to repeat so she said “ everyone at school laughed at me and they called me chocolate!”

I tried not to make a big deal about it and said “ don’t you love chocolate? “

She said “yes! “

“ So what is the problem ? “ I said

“ They are making fun of me !! Am I not beautiful ?!!”

That was the first time my pretty little girl questioned the way she looks

In a different world we decided to live … all white skin toned people lived there. where brown and black skin was not known for them. So their kids were not raised to recognize differences and appreciate it.

I couldn’t find another answer or even think about one so I just said “ of course you are gorgeous, don’t let them think otherwise !!”

Sleeping that night was so hard I had nightmares about myself when i was on her age asking my mom about the reason kids in school used to laugh about the shape of my nose

The next day I was so mad i just wanted to go to the school and talk to her teacher and let them Punish those kids

However, I realized that will never help anyone, they will just hate her instead of understanding who she is.

The more I thought about it the more I became less frustrated at the kid’s parents, the teacher or even the kids. I got mad at the situation itself.

So after a while I had the idea of showing my daughter different pictures of different girls in a variety of skin tones.

The pictures were labeled as the prettiest girl in……..

so we looked at many different “chocolate pictures “ as she likes to call them now.

She got to realize that chocolate is white, dark and all colors in between and each and every kind of it is delicious but people around us prefer one kind and try to make it as the stereotype of beauty where in another place around the world people would love a different beauty so she realized that everyone has their own beauty.

She asked me to take some of the pictures and show them to her classmates.

I called her teacher and had a long conversation with her where the teacher agreed to give my daughter time in class for a small presentation, where she will talk about the beauty of chocolate.