Your worth isn’t based on what skin colour, size or shape you are.

Sarah, a beautiful young teen with a regal dark and dusky complexion, joyous gleaming eyes and wavy hair was as confident as a bird committing itself to the air.

But with time, she was starting to lose the glimmer her eyes held. From a very young age, she was harassed, judged and bullied over her appearance and, as she grew, it worsened. The amount of criticism she had to take was insane.

She’d often gaze at her reflection for hours to see why she couldn’t match the beauty standards society had laid. Her friends would give her unsolicited advice to lighten her skin tone. The feeling of inferiority entirely caged her. She was a great painter with a vision, she’d paint sceneries for hours, but now her face was her only canvas and whitening creams her acrylics. Her wide imagination was completely shattered amid her battle to fit in the beauty standards.

As a child, she had always wanted to play the main role in school plays but, according to her mentors and teachers, a princess playing the lead role was supposed to be fair and pretty. She couldn’t perceive what part of “pretty” she lacked.

One day while she was disappointingly returning from school, she stumbled on a box on her way.

“Ouch!” she yelled, “Who in their right mind would irresponsibly dump a box in the middle of the pedestrian track?”

She picked up the box and thought to herself, “Maybe I can recycle it.” Hence she took it home.

After dinner she opened the box to take a look. Suddenly, lights and sparkles started emerging from the box. Sarah was stunned and puzzled. She peeked inside.

“Make a wish,” came a wish a voice from the box, “Make a wish, for I am a magic box.”

Sarah was shocked, but thrilled as well. She stammered, “I want to look fairer and thinner, maybe prettier.”

Golden and white lights glistened out of the box and disappeared. Sarah felt a tickling sensation on all her body, then it stopped, she hurried towards the mirror in her room and she was awestruck at the sight.

She had become fairer, her hair straighter and her body a lot thinner. She couldn’t believe her eyes.

When her parents saw her, they were speechless, Sarah didn’t want to scare them about the magic box, so she told them that she was using a whitening cream and wearing a tightening dress inside. Her parents remained bewildered and looked at each other.

That night, out of excitement, she couldn’t sleep. She thought she was finally able to look like the rest of the girls in her class. She couldn’t wait to see them the next day and flaunt her looks.

The next day, Sarah confidently rushed to her friends in the corridor.

“Hello,” Sarah grinned, “How have you all been?”

The girls turned towards her and broke into fits of laughter.

“What have you done to your hair?” said Anne laughing hysterically.

“She looks like the zombie from the movie we watched the other day,” another girl laughed back.

“But now I am fairer like the rest of you,” protested Sarah.

“Honey, you look as pale as an anaemic patient,” replied Anne.

“Maybe it’s not me who is ugly, it’s people like you,” said Sarah spent the rest of the day avoiding everyone.

On her way back home, Sarah realised a lot about the mindset of people. She wasn’t depressed or disheartened, instead she felt content as she realised people will always judge, no matter what one does or looks like.

“Why must I mould myself to gain somebody else’s validation? It’s not me who needs to change,” Sarah told herself. “Beauty is not what people perceive of me; why must then I allow anybody to decide my worth.”

When she was inside her room, she knelt down, took the box and wished to get back to looking herself again.

“Dear magic box, make me myself again,” wished Sarah, “For I know I am beautiful just the way I am.”

From then onwards, Sarah decided to fight back all the criticism she was subjected to because she knew that she didn’t need to change, but it was people’s mentality that should be changed. Her self-love had awakened and she aimed to remove the false standards attached to beauty, because beauty is diverse.

Published in Dawn, Young World, July 16th, 2022