Sammy
Sosa (sigh). Where to start?
I’m
sure by now, many of you have seen a new picture of Sammy Sosa that emerged last
week. If you will recall a few years
ago, Sammy Sosa bleached his skin. He
went from being creamy caramel brown to a pasty vanilla. The newest picture of him went viral last
week, and he kinda looks like strawberry Nesquik to me. I’m still not sure if that was really his
skin color or if it was the pink shirt and hat he was wearing in the picture
that gave him a pink glow.
Either
way, he looks ridiculous.
I will admit that I laughed so hard at times
that I laughed myself to tears at all the memes of Sammy Sosa that appeared on
social media last week, especially on Black Twitter. Some of those memes? Straight comedy, y’all (lol). Straight comedy.
But
after the laughter subsided, a feeling came over me that I cannot accurately
describe. I’m not sure if it was
sadness. Disbelief? Maybe.
Perhaps it was pity.
Look
… when I was growing up, I was teased and picked on a lot for being
dark-skinned. I was called ugly and
unattractive by kids my age and by some "adults". It was hard not to
internalize those insults people constantly hurled at me. As if those
coming-of-age years aren’t already awkward enough, and then adding to that the
low self-esteem I had because of things people would say about and to me every day. Every single day.
Looking
back, perhaps it was just the ass-backward town I grew up in because when I
went to Florida every summer to visit my Mama’s family, when I went to summer
camps, when I went away to the South Carolina Governor’s School for Science and
Math my junior and senior years of high school, when I went away to college,
and when I moved away from home and started living on my own, everything was
different and people treated me differently.
All those years of being made to feel less than because of my skin tone
took a toll because I initially felt suspicious of anyone who gave me real
compliments. Instead of “You’re pretty
for a dark girl”, I started to hear “You’re pretty.” Period.
It
took a long time to undo all the damage of all those hurtful words from my
childhood and to claim and embrace my Beautiful Black Queen status.
So
in a crazy kind of way, I get it. I
understand how words can cut so deeply that they leave lasting scars on your
psyche. But even after enduring years of
backhanded compliments, teasing, and insults, I never thought of bleaching my
skin, and I never wanted to be white.
THAT part, I don’t get and can’t understand.
In a previous interview on the subject
of Sosa lightening his skin, he said, “It’s
a bleaching cream that I apply before going to bed and whitens my skin
some. It’s a cream that I have, that I
use to soften [my skin], but has bleached me some. I’m not a racist, I live my
life happily.”
So
this new Sammy Sosa? I don’t know if I
want to give him a hug or smack him upside the head and ask him what the hell
is he thinking. I guess it all boils
down to doing whatever it is you need to do to feel better about yourself. But when feeling better about yourself involves
drastically changing your natural skin color and becoming a totally different
person, that’s just sad.
Extremely
sad.
