My cheeks grow dandelions, and I always thought they were so pretty until I was told they were weeds, and I spend most of my days wondering about the difference, and wondering if I can ever forgive the person who pointed it out.

Because when a man tells a Black woman that she looks mixed as a form of endearment, he’s insinuating that her beauty comes from the (allegedly) non-Black part of her. All they’re effectively saying is: You’re too beautiful to just be Black. Oh, but I am. I’m beautiful just like my beautiful Black mother, just like her mother and her mother’s mother. We’re generations of women born right here in the US of A, from North Carolina to Massachusetts by way of the motherland. Brown skin, nappy hair, cornbread and gravy gorgeous. We aren’t beautiful in spite of our Blackness, we are beautiful because of it. So don’t dare try to give the credit to anything else.