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Cotton Ball<\/em><\/p>\n “Why does your hair look like that?\u201d<\/p>\n The random question boggled my poor little seven-year-old mind. \u201cLike what?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cLike\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6puffy. It’s like a cotton ball.\u201d Amanda grabbed my tightly-coiled hair.\u201cIt’s so weird.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI don’t know.\u201d I answered. And I didn’t. I hadn’t even thought about it.<\/p>\n Amanda resumed coloring, but her question stayed in my mind. Forever.<\/p>\n One little comment opened my eyes to \u00a0 many differences between my peers and myself. Why was my skin so much darker? Why did my lips stick out so much? Why did I have flat, oval snoutish nose rather than the thin, pointed beak-type snozzle that even our Barbies had? Why couldn’t my hair go up in a ponytail and flow down my back like a waterfall, rather than stay atop like a stagnant cloud?<\/p>\n I interrogated my mother one day, as I noticed that she and my dad shared some of the same differences that I did. \u201cMom, why do I look so different from the other kids?\u201d<\/p>\n My mom’s eyes widened. \u201cWhat do you mean?\u201d<\/p>\n I rolled my eyes at how ignorant <\/em>parents could be. \u201cLike, my hair is short and poofy. And my skin is dark. And my nose is flat<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n My mother awkwardly delivered her best seven-year-old-friendly answer. \u201cEveryone looks different, honey. Some people’s hair look one way, some people’s hair look another way. Some people’s skin is darker, some is lighter. I think your skin and your hair are gorgeous.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWhat about my nose?\u201d I asked, panicked.<\/p>\n \u201cYour nose too. You’re beautiful.\u201d<\/p>\n That was enough for me then. If Mom said I was \u201cbeautiful,” and Mom was right about everything, then I had to be. Simple.<\/p>\n As I got older, life was less simple. I felt like another species, one that sported cornrows and twists and Afropuffs. The puff-ponytail, my favorite hairstyle, became the one I stopped wearing after two boys started calling it the \u201cCotton-ball head\u201d and told me my skin looked like it’s been \u201cout in the sun too long.\u201d<\/p>\n But, in third grade, I took my first standardized test. Gender: Female. Easy.<\/em> Under Race, I saw some unfamiliar terms: White, Black. To me, the terms seemed to describe Crayola crayons the color of paper and as dark as the night. How could I choose which crayon<\/em> I identified with?<\/p>\n On a whim, I selected the label that said, Black.<\/p>\n A blackened bubble by the \u201cBlack\u201d word to match my Black skin. The white bubble by the \u201cWhite word\u201d.<\/p>\n I’m dark. They’re light.<\/p>\n Inexplicably, that felt right.<\/p>\n I’m\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6\u201cBlack.\u201d <\/em>But..what did that mean? <\/em>I had no clue, but I figured it appropriately explained my physical differences, and I accepted it. With my race being nothing more than a factoid to keep in the back of my head, I spent my childhood like every kid: trying to mimic my peers in hopes of \u201cfitting in.\u201d I rejected speaking, dressing, acting, and eating the way my parents and family did, and absorbed the culture of my school peers.<\/p>\n My world was flipped when I went to middle school in a parallel universe. My parents sent me to a school across the county because it had a special program there. In this parallel universe, the majority became the minority. I was surrounded everywhere by people that looked like me. \u00a0 My excitement died after my first conversation: I went up to a girl with lips, hair, and skin like mine, and tried befriending her. She pushed me away, claiming that I \u201ctalked like a white girl.\u201d \u00a0 By the end of the week, I had heard that same phrase multiple times. \u00a0 Now instead of being called \u201cfreak\u201d and \u201cugly\u201d, I was called \u201cfake,” \u201cwannabe,” \u201csellout,\u201d and \u201cOreo\u201d (meaning \u201cBlack outside, White inside\u201d).<\/p>\n Within the program itself, I was the only Black person in many of my classes, and I still felt like I didn’t quite belong. The words from the Black community convinced me that by being myself I was breaking some unwritten rules of Blackness.<\/p>\n I was more confused than ever. \u00a0 What did <\/em>\u201cBlack\u201d mean? Did it mean I couldn’t speak like I did? Did it mean I shouldn’t be in the program I was in? I tried to immerse myself in the \u201cBlack\u201d culture to feel accepted there, so I could have a home somewhere<\/em>.<\/p>\n Sorry to say, things didn’t get much better as middle school went on. But, in high school, I moved and did make a group of friends. I was still among the few Black people in my classes, but my new friends seemed <\/em>more accepting. Well, as long as I followed their <\/em>rules of being an AP\/IB student. I had no idea how much middle school had changed me. Whenever I spoke up at someone using the \u201cn\u201d word or publicly appraised the occasional rap song, my friends laughed as they told me to \u201cdon’t get all Black on us!\u201d I was embarrassed at being too<\/em> Black. After all, I was an AP student. AP students didn’t sit with the Black kids. AP students wear their hair straight, and \u201cprofessional\u201d (only achievable through weave for myself).<\/p>\n As a college student, I’ve seen all types of Blackness. Some are African, some are Carribbean, Latinos, \u201cOreos,\u201d those from \u201cthe REAL hood.\u201d If I have learned anything after all these years of never quite <\/em>belonging, I’ve learned what \u201cBlack\u201d means. There’s no discrepancy between anyone’s appearance and my personality. \u201cBlack\u201d is a color as dark as the night. But it also means a girl whose hair looks like a cloud, whose skin her friends risk skin cancer to imitate, who can rock cool hairstyles, and whose nose is adorbs AF. It also means a girl who loves books, who takes advanced classes, and talks like Cher from Clueless<\/em>. It also means I like rap music and I stand up against microaggressions. It means I’m \u201cdifferent,” it means I’m \u201cbeautiful.” It means I’m Olivia.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Cotton Ball “Why does your hair look like that?\u201d The random question boggled my poor little seven-year-old mind. \u201cLike what?\u201d \u201cLike\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6puffy. It’s like a cotton ball.\u201d Amanda grabbed my tightly-coiled hair.\u201cIt’s so weird.\u201d \u201cI don’t continue reading<\/span>