Well, Nyakim Gatwech, a Sudanese-born young woman has vowed to protect and be proud of her God-given dark skin without altering it in any way.
She is currently a fashion model known primarily for her melanin-rich skin, which has earned her the nickname ‘Queen of Dark’.
The 26-year-old lady was a refugee who grew up in camps in Ethiopia and Kenya before her family immigrated to the United States when she was 13-years-old.
While in Africa, Nyakim Gatwech was never ashamed of her super dark skin and her South Sudanese heritage but she began to suffer abuse when she found herself on a white man’s land. She was a target of bullies simply because of her skin colour.
According to Odditycentral.com, some of the kids at her school in Buffalo, New York, could be very mean, and having never had to deal with racism before, she was confused. Some middle-schoolers were afraid of her, while others made fun of her dark skin tone, and she would come home crying unable to explain to her parents what was going on.
Things improved when she moved to St. Cloud, Minnesota for high school, and became with other Sudanese and Somali kids, but she never really felt like she belonged. Even today, some of the things people say about her skin make her feel uncomfortable, but she has learned to take them in stride and educate instead of complaining, the news website added.
Nyakim became an online sensation a couple of years when she posted on social media some of her experiences with people who thought she was unfit to live among them.
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She has met people who asked if her dark skin is the result of some medical condition, or if she can just shower the black away.
The discrimination was so bad to the extent that one Uber driver once asked her if she would bleach her skin for $10,000, and the young lady was shocked to hear the driver make such an offer to her.
“Why on earth would I bleach this beautiful melanin God [blessed] me with…you won’t believe the kind of questions I get and the kind of looks I get for having this skin,” Nyakim Gatwech wrote.
Her post got over 10,000 likes and got her interviews with Yahoo!, Teen Vogue and Huffington Post. She has been using the spotlight to give kids and teenagers the representation that she lacked as a young girl
Growing up, the dark and lovely lady did not have any ambition of becoming a model.
When she was 17-years-old, her tutor, who was a design student, asked her to model a dress she designed for a student fashion show, and she loved it. Since then, she has been doing modelling gigs both in Minnesota, as well as New York City and Los Angeles, reports say.
Having suffered a lot of discrimination and humiliation, African-born model has decided to use her influence to advocate for self-acceptance, speaking out against discrimination based on skin colour.
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She seizes opportunities at events to champion her campaign in addition to her Instagram page which is followed by over half a million people.
“The negative reactions or comments don’t affect me as much now—some of them I laugh at. But there are some that go deep and bring me down for a little bit,” Gatwech said in an interview. “Some people say I get followers because people feel bad for me, not because I’m actually beautiful. They say I’m the dumbest person ever. But there are millions more people who think I’m beautiful and give me positive feedback.”