Extra Story : A look at color

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"Mom, why is everyone in your family so mean to me ?."

"Oh sweety, they just don't like you because you're different."

"But what did i do wrong ? I've always tried my best for them. Why are they...."

"Do you know why ? Because you don't look the same as us."

I was born with a slightly dark or tan skin color. But the thing is, i came from a family that won't accept my skin color. My father was biracial. My African American Grandpa married a Japanese woman, my grandma.

But my mother was a beautiful local white asian woman. She came from an ordinary asian family that cared about looks.

You see, foreigners are like exotic stuff to people like my mother. And my father wasn't an exception. They met each other when my father was on a business trip to my mother's country. They soon got to know each other better and one day got married.

This marriage was not entirely supported by my mother's family. Because even though my father was half Japanese, his skin was a slightly darker shade than i was. But on the other side, my mother's family was also curious and finally took the gamble on having a foreigner's blood on the family.

And so, a year or 2 later, my mother gave birth to a little baby girl, which is me. When i was born, my mother had some troubles. The grandmother from my mother's side kept pestering our family and blamed my father for having to make her daughter gave birth to me. She kept blaming him and all that, because of my skin color.

That's right, just because of the crazy beauty standards that my mother's family adopted, they won't accept a tan skinned baby like me. They are pure asians, and many asian countries prefer light skin tones over a shade of dark melanin.

Sure, many asians were tan or kinda dark like me, but.... The beauty standards that they have are still the same. They prefer light skin.

Just the same as westerners that preferred tan or darker skin, they thought light skin was the embodiment of pure beauty, and the palest skin like the ones the westerners have were very exotic to them.

We all thought things that we usually don't see everyday are exotic.

But enough of that, let's say, when I'm still growing up, my years in that side of my family is not great.

Everyday, i was forced to give myself many lightening skincare products. If i didn't do a shitton of whitening face wash, mask, vitamins, lotion, supplements, and all that stuff in a week, my grandmother will snap.

Even when i had allergies to certain products, or didn't like the smell of it, like i want to throw up, they will still force me to have it. They never beat me with much force, but little things like hard core pinching, a hit on the arm or thigh, talking shit about me as if I'm a lower being,etc.

My father probably had the same treatment too, or maybe worse. But he's a successful grown man, plus a foreigner. I figured that he had many ways to escape them as an respectable adult.

At first my mother told her that i was born this way and everyone should accept that like she did. Yet years of pestering can make a person change their mind. Even till then, although my mother never hit me, she also kept persuading me to use those whitening stuff.

And i thought that it was a normal thing, until i saw that forcing someone to change their skin color was wrong. It took 13 years of my life to realized what's wrong. And that's when i knew, that.... I have a really deep hatred to that side of my family. Especially my grandmother.

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