“I don’t like my skin. I want your skin.”
Uh-oh. This is coming from my four-year-old daughter. On the one hand, I’m not surprised because I know that children often want to look like their parents. I know that at the preschool age kids become aware of differences. I know that my skin color is more similar to the “majority” of Americans’ skin color (although “white” won’t be a majority in another 20 or 30 years, demographers believe).
On the other hand, I am surprised because we have always told the girls how beautiful their skin is. We’ve never shied away from talking about it. The girls seemed to like it when I called their skin a beautiful “caramel” or “brown sugar”, and even when their brother called it “peanut butter color”. Most of their dolls are various colors and they see many Asian children at church, at the grocery store, etc.
I’m also surprised that the statement comes from Regina rather than my seven-year-old daughter Meg. From her earliest days Regina has loved pictures of Asian people in books and magazines, saying, “This is good! This is like Reggie!” Meanwhile Meg has, despite our efforts at limiting commercial exposure, always loved the Barbie/Goldilocks/Disney Cinderella model. (Separate rant: why do Mu Lan and Pocahontas not get the attention of the rest of the Disney Princesses?) Not that I want my home full of Disney merchandise, but my girls are bound to have noticed that Mu Lan isn’t on any of it.)
(I will admit that because Regina went to a speech therapy preschool, she has not had the diversity of students and teachers that existed at Meg’s preschool.)
The conversation actually began with Regina saying, “I don’t like my eyebrows.” Now, Regina has a noticeably droopy eyelid. She wears an eyepatch for an hour a day to keep the eye from becoming “lazy” until corrective surgery can be performed at about age seven. So my first thought was that she meant to say she didn’t like her eyelids.
Then she said, “I don’t like this face. I don’t like this skin. I want this skin.” As she said this she squeezed the skin on my forearm.
Now what?
Please see these related blogs:
Talking With Children About Special Needs
How Do My Adopted Kids Think About Skin Color?
Other Kids’ Reactions to My Adopted Kids’ Skin Color
Examining My Own Attitudes Toward Race