#and seeing other bipoc creators here create spaces and fully embrace these pieces of themselves is so inspiring y'all are amazing

[moskaisley]

imagine growing up your entire life never seeing yourself in the shows and movies you watched or the books you read. and every time you tried to put yourself there, it was never really you. it was a ‘better’ version of you. pale. blonde. skinny. blue eyes. had a name that didn’t sound weird. pronounced things in perfect english. because in your mind, you made the connection that the characters you love and admire so much could never love your skin or your hair, or your eyes, or your body, your culture or your own fucking name. they liked the pretty white people on tv, on book covers in movies, in magazines, billboards, commercials, and on and on and on. never you. imagine hating those parts of yourself so fucking much that it spilled out of your daydreams and into your real life and suddenly, you don’t want to listen to your family when they try to teach you about where they came from. you stop listening, stop paying attention. you don’t want to eat their food, you want to eat what normal people eat. you get mad when your family doesn’t speak english in public, talk the way normal people talk. you want to be treated like a normal person. like a white person. and over time, you can say with some sick sort of pride that 

“oh, i’m not like the others. i’m normal.”

then imagine growing up. learning and changing and realizing that you actually love your skin and your hair and your eyes and your body and your culture. and you feel your stomach sink with guilt when you think about your past because you spent so much time in misery trying to tamp those parts of you down. to become normal. you ask yourself, ’how could I do that to myself? how could I hurt myself so badly?’ And when you find things that you love and put yourself in them, you try your hardest to see you. cultivate a space of your own, make it feel like home. and it’s beautiful because it’s you and resonates with you and maybe, just maybe other people felt the way I felt, and maybe this can be home for them too. only to turn around and have someone yell that you’re still not normal. it’s still not for you.

#🤪🤪raise ur hand if u wanted to be white growing up because that's literally all you saw 24/7 🤪 #idk idk im just mad that i spent so much time believing that bullshit #and i have a lot of shame for how i neglected my own heritage #even just how i looked i remember almost crying in high school because i tanned and i thought i was too dark #kept telling myself 'id be prettier if i was white' #now i love my culture and my skin and my identity and i want to share these pieces of me with others. #and seeing other bipoc creators here create spaces and fully embrace these pieces of themselves is so inspiring y'all are amazing #so seeing you all get hate for it is Irritating #seeing creators leave because they don't feel included is so fucking sad #but i don't blame them! the way fandom treats bipoc is fucking !! garbage !! #because they refuse to make space for us and have the gall to criticize when we make things for ourselves #ANYWAYS IM IRATE AND ANNOYED #DO BETTER