Distorted Views.....How It All Began

Almost a year ago a vision was put on my heart, I believe for a few different reasons but for one that stood out to me in particular. For starters, my then four-year old seemed to be going through a crisis. To hear my beautiful brown girl say she doesn't want to be brown was saddening to me to say the least. I am a dark skinned black woman from a family of dark skinned as well as lighter skinned females so to hear her say that hurt. My daughter was in Pre-K at the time at a private Catholic school. The school she attended mostly consisted of Black and Hispanic students,  so she couldn't have gotten this mindset there. During this time she was very heavy into Barbie. She was into the whole nine yards, the dolls, the fashion,  the glamour, the dreamhouse, the movies. I am one of those mom's who wants their child to see characters that they can relate to in life. Barbie really isn't it. She has one or two brown friends, the most are white like herself. They are fashionable, glamorous and well liked by everyone, what little girl wouldn't want to be like them. Atleast in this day and age there are options to get the brown dolls, which were the only ones I would purchase. Sometimes she would tell me " that's not the real Barbie", or "I want the white one". This really concerned me. Is my child going to be one that dislikes her black features? Is she having issues this early in life with self love? What do I do about this? How do I help her love herself? Also, she would say " I want to be the same color as daddy". So her dad is light skin ( high yellow we would call it) and I am dark skin, my daughter is right in the middle, to be expected. So sometimes I wondered if she relayed having light skin as a connection with her dad, that wouldnt be so bad, but her comments continued.  It bothered me so much that I asked my counselor about it. She stated that this was normal for young black girls, stated that they all went through a faze where they idolize being white. I was taken aback by this. I asked if kids of other races go through the same thing, she said not so much, they can see people that look like them everywhere they look on TV and in the media and in cartoons. She had a point, so now I had to make it my business to make my babygirl understand how special her being brown is. She's always known she's beautiful but I believe she had a distorted view of beauty due to what she sees in our world. Our world will lead little girls to believe they are not good enough,  pretty enough, or smart enough. They will lead them to believe their hair is not long enough, their facial features are too prominent, when all of these things are what make us great. I made it my mission from here on out to make sure she knows how great she is, and it is a thing called Melanin that makes her marvel, and there The Melanin Marvel was born.