Ifelayo Ajanaku

25 New Medium

 By Ifelayo Ajanaku

There were six shades of an American Girl doll in 2010: “10 Light," "20 Old Medium,” “25 New Medium," "30 Dark,” and “35 Very Dark.” Six shades listed from top to bottom to reflect a scale of skin tones that only two out of six were made for Black dolls: “30 Dark,” and “35 Very Dark.”

It only took six shades to change everything.

Like any little girl who grew up in the 2010s, I wanted an American Girl doll. The desire to caress her smooth hair, put makeup on her as if she were a princess, braid her hair…And a few weeks later, after I told my mom I wanted her, she came in the mail. Excited, I touched its smooth dark hair, flattened out its clothes, and put its bed in the corner of my room, staring into what I envisioned: a mini me. I held the doll and looked at it, hoping that people looked at me with the same dilated pupils and admiration I had when I looked at her. Beautiful, because of her long, dark brown hair. All the features that I didn’t see when I stared into a mirror. Pretty, because she had lighter skin. A pretty me, that was the shade ‘25 New Medium.’ 

I was a ‘35 Very Dark,’ and I didn’t have long straight hair, or a nose like my American Girl doll — and especially not the kind of skin complexion that Tinkerbell and Cinderella had in Disney movies besides Princess and the Frog. And, when I stared in the mirror, my skin conjured in me the emotions of shame and pity, reminding me of how ashamed I was of being ‘35 Very Dark,’ because dolls that looked like me were never beautiful enough to sell out in stores. 

I don’t know when it started. Really.

It could’ve been the television, the girls displayed on ads, growing up with my hair relaxed. Or, in a deeper context — slavery, the KKK, maybe even Ronald Reagan, just because I feel like including him. But, if you were to ask me, “Who taught you to hate the color of your skin?” I would respond, “White supremacy, slavery, the fact that the Pledge of Allegiance did not mean freedom and liberty for all.” But if you were to ask me on a deeper level, I would say, “I did.”

Yes, it was true that my nose was round, my hair was nappy, my skin glowed like the night, my hair wasn't naturally straight, and I was never, never going to look like my American Girl doll. Yet, I taught myself how to hate myself through the shame I felt covering my entire body, dripping over my clothes like slime, sticking to me after I walked into class with braids in my hair. The way I dreamt of having blue eyes like Pecola in The Bluest Eye. How I observed the girls on television and picked out the same clothes as them at Justice. And at such a young age, I was manifesting internalized hatred  from the shade of a doll and  allowing myself to be engulfed by White society.

I was never alone though.

 Many Black girls in our country have  different kinds of shades, noses, hair textures, eyes — yet there's still a specific kind of doll that is on the shelves. The kind that looks exactly like a White doll with a different shade. The kind of doll that is only a dark shade to look inclusive, so the company can profit off of it. These are the kind of dolls that are one of the first standards Black girls compare themselves to because we view them as vessels that encapsulate beauty in a physical image we can touch, feel, and see. These are the kind of dolls that tell us, “We are not the prize.”

We are taught from these dolls that we have to have straight hair to be viewed as presentable to the public. We are taught that our facial features must mimic White features to be beautiful. We are taught that, to be beautiful and Black, we must not look it.

We live in a society that tries to force Black girls into a mold at a young age — to stray them away from being a product of their ancestors, from their heritage. Constantly, society tells Black girls they are “Too much, too loud,” when that really just translates to telling us, “Be lesser — then you’ll be treated equally,” when we all know that is far from happening right now. But since I am no longer the little girl that would rather be '25 New Medium’ over a beautiful ‘35 Very Dark,’  I refuse to be quiet — not like anyone expected me to anyway.

Author’s Note: What inspired me to create this piece was a reflection about a moment in my life, and in particular The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison. As a senior, for the past few months I've been doing a lot of reflecting on moments that made me, me, and one of them that stuck with me a lot was when I was ashamed of getting a doll my complexion since I'm of a darker complexion. That internalized hate that cultivated in me at such a young age for the color of my skin affected the way I perceived beauty and so many other things. It took me a while to truly understand why I behaved like that, and who taught me that, but after reflecting in this essay, I've been driven much closer to my younger self that would've been more comfortable in her skin if someone had told her, "Dear Black girl, you are the prize."