Shaniera Akram, in a message to the women of colour, urged brown girls to embrace their natural skin shade, calling them the “envy of half the women” of the planet.
In a long post on Twitter, Shaneira opened up about how a lot many white girls, including herself, grew up wishing they had a dusky complexion, for which they went to any length.
“What I'm trying to say is Don't try and change who you are, be happy underneath your skin, your beauty is interpreted by you, you are beautiful no matter what your skin colour is!! And just remember, to all the girls with brown skin who want white, you are the envy of half the women on this planet, women and girls all over the world that go to any extremes to have your colour skin, so that's got to be something worth enjoying,” she said in her message.
At the start of her post, she said that she was also among those white women wishing they had dark skin too.
“We thought that if our skin was brown we looked healthier, prettier and more attractive to boys. We would go to any length to change the colour of white to brown because that what what was instilled in our minds, that brown was more beautiful,” she wrote.
Shaniera said that the girls went to great lengths to acquire a darker shade by rubbing "harmful oil" on face, laying all day out in the harsh sun and even in a solarium with fake sunlight machine.
“We would also spend hours lying in a solarium which is fake sunlight machine risking skin cancers, skin disease, spots and adding years to our faces causing wrinkles and irreversible damage. And when the sun wasn't available we would also rub toxic stains and dyes in to our skin everyday to give our skin a 3-5 shades darker sun kissed brown look,” she continued, adding that it would leave their skin “patchy, streaky and scaley”.
Here's a look at the post: