Imagine a fourteen year old girl sitting in the middle of her bed crying. Shedding tears of unworthiness she believed she wasn’t pretty. She was a dark skinned girl that was called names by her peers at school. Well that young girl was actually me. I grew up in a neighborhood where there was a majority of African Americans. All of the light skinned girl was considered as the pretty girls and to be called dark skinned was an insult. I lost a lot of confidence and grew antisocial because of how people treat me. As I grew older, I began to notice that African American girls don’t have as much confidence or self-worth as they should. Why is it that the black community believes having the perfect body is having a big booty or being light skinned? Then I realized something: hip hop has one of the biggest influences on the African American community. I am a huge fan of the hip hop music, but i truly believe hip hop community causes African American females to have a lower self-esteem because of the degrading lyrics and hip hop's perception of what beauty is.
