🖤🖤🖤

☀️✨☀️In my stories, I will always be clear that my home life was loving, nurturing, warm-everything that every child deserves.☀️✨☀️

Then there was the rest of the world.

I was a highly sensitive and soft-spoken kid, who was always analyzing painful rules of the world in ways that went way beyond my age.
I used to think I was shy, but I now realize that I was so overwhelmed by how people treated each other. 
I just became more and more silent as time went on. Because silence = safety at that time for me.

As a pre-teen, I felt a deep disgust toward the way people blindly followed society’s rules.
People followed the rules with cruelty and without question or reflection.

☀️But, I'm a Sunkissed Girl

As a pre-teen, one day I was at an outside gathering, and I heard a group of girls talking about the reason they have to stay out of the sun.
(I refuse to continue to repeat the same trauma words over and over, that's why I make sure to choose my words carefully. There is no need for me to directly quote their reason for staying out of the sun. We already know.) 

So basically, they were clearly influenced by society's sickening rules, and so was I.
Even though I was often told that I was very pretty,
I still wanted to look like the women who fit the stereotypical Hollywood beauty standards.

But even though I felt that way, I was always questioning these belief systems and trying to break free out of that mindset that's rooted in lies, pain and cruelty.

So while they went to sit in the shade, I decided I would make a statement.
I decided to just stand there in the sun.
 
One girl said, "Zuri why are you standing in the sun?"

And I started thinking, "Well this isn't going the way I hoped."
I wanted them to think, "She has our skin color and she still doesn't care if her skin color changes!"

I wanted to be an inspiration.
Instead, they were like, "Girl why are you in the sun?"

I honestly was not able to put my action and thoughts into words. 
So I went and sat in the shade.
I really didn't want the spotlight on me and I didn't want to start an argument with these girls that I respected.

‼️❓Where Are the Women Who Look Like Me?

My pain was intense and the void was deep.

Personal compliments could not erase my need to see other women with my hair and my complexion, being praised for their beauty, by gentlemen.

And in front of the entire world.

This is where KiKi Shepard and a few other famous women come in.

She will forever hold a special place in my teen heart that will never take for granted how special it was to see a lady who looked like me being celebrated in a wholesome manner.

I used to love when the male hosts got ready to introduce KiKi Shepard because I knew they were going to acknowledge her natural beauty in endearing, respectful gentlemen-like ways.

✨And girl, those gowns! Her figure, her height, the jewelry, her hair.
And what I now realize is more of a treasure than those external qualities mentioned above:
was her smile,
her warmth,
her care for the contestants,
her connection with the audience,
her chemistry with the hosts,
her elegance
and overall presence.

Those are the rare and precious qualities that don't fade, can't be faked, can't be scripted, and can't be manufactured into cookie-cutter Hollywood beauty standards.

So I now realize that, more than me desperately needing to see more women with my hair and complexion being praised for their physical beauty on TV,
I really was also longing to see their nurturing spirit and softness celebrated beyond just physical beauty.

These type of women existed in my reality, and it made no sense that my reality had to disappear once I turned on the TV, or opened a book.

🖤Kiki and Me: Beauty + Presence
Hollywood and the media are the same destructive entity, and while they control what is seen, they can never control what is felt.

Kiki Shepard had that presence that went from just the TV to my heart and mind.

She really cared about those contestants' feelings-and baby, some of them really needed extra support because Amateur Night was serious business.

✨The place where dreams are born and legends are made!

That is why her beautiful impact has stayed within my teen heart after all these years.

KiKi Shepard's impact on people doesn't fade with time.

🖤✨ As for me, I can say the same thing.

The beauty compliments and male attention faded once I got in my 30's.
I had been dealing with normal attention, romanticized attention, and aggressive attention starting as a pre-pre-teen, so that was the only life I knew. And it was very difficult.

And now that it's gone, I'm able to reflect and rebuild and heal.

I disturbingly learned that "youthfulness" is a primary factor that attracts that type of superficial, shallow attention that made me feel like an object rather than a full person.

Youth fades.

But what remained is so sweet and innocent:
like one day when I was about 40, I was sitting on a playground bench, and this little pre-school boy, on his way to the equipment, stopped in his tracks, and said

💐💐"You are too beautiful."

And he just kept staring. I mean, he didn't even run to the playground equipment, lol.

💙❤️That experience is so much more precious to me now

There's manufactured beauty that Hollywood and society will continue to own and use against women who look like me.

But then there's beauty + presence.

And that is what I OWN.
My own image.
My own representation.
My own beauty standards.

✨✨People Magnet
I'm nowhere near outgoing, and never tried to be a people-magnet but I am. I realize that it's my presence and energy that attracts people. Even my tone of voice over the phone, people like.

I've learned to use all of this to my advantage.

And I've learned to stop framing my stories from a place of "why can't I see women like me on TV" to "look what I actually have in my real life."

✨✨✨

Once It's Showtime at the Apollo ended, I didn't get to spend my Saturday nights with Kiki Shepard anymore but I know she was still able to have joyous connections with people who were lucky enough to be in her presence.

"Where are the women who look like me?
Who think like me and feel like me?"
We've always been here.
And are here to stay.

But healed, this time.