Self-Image

Dear loving people,

I enrolled for a Maters program recently. My first day in school was so amazing because I met a couple of friends that I had not seen for a long time. We spent some time chatting in class mostly during the early days of the course and as observant as I was, I soon noticed an interesting coincidence taking shape before my very eyes.

One of my classmates was this chocolate-brown girl who by coincidence or design walked in most of the times just around the times when we broke out laughing. She will look scornfully at our direction each time this happened and then just walk clumsily to the nearest bench where she would ‘collapse’ into it dejectedly.

This went on surprisingly for a long time and I soon noticed as time went on that each time she came to class and noticed we were in, she would loiter around until classes began so she will walk in with the mass and thus avoid our demoralizing laughter. As irregular in school as I was because of my other schedules, I soon noticed that the girls’ complexion was changing for the worse. She was getting lighter and lighter in complexion as our course progressed such that by the end of the first year, the girl’s complexion had undergone a 100% lightening and she was now frightfully ‘light’ in complexion.

What had happen to her beautiful chocolate-brown complexion much admired by many? I was so touched by such a negative transformation that I approached Doris as she was called for a talk. It was during these discussions that I came to understand what was happening with her, I was exposed to the self-inflicted torture she was undergoing.

Doris came from a humble background where she quickly evaluated herself as an ugly girl. She felt people didn’t like her around because of her imagined ugliness and despite her apparent intelligence; she could not come to grips with such conclusions. Very little of her friends where males and the only explanation according to her was as a result of her ugly physical appearance. She felt laughed at everywhere she went and so she decided to artificially modify her complexion so as to gain the admiration of others. According to her, her complexion was too dark for the image she had of a beautiful girl.

So when she got to the University, she started saving some money from her allowance to be able to undergo the costly procedures of modifying her complexion. It downed on me that Doris was suffering from the direct consequence of nursing a very negative self-image. But what exactly is self-image? 

To be continued….