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Sun Baking

She lay on the chaise lounge face down on the deck of the pool, a few feet from the edge of the water. It was mid-day and the sun bore down on her intensely, baking her skin into a light golden bronze. Casually, she slid her spaghetti strap down her left shoulder to the side of her bikini bra. She didn’t want a tan line there. She wanted her upper body nice and even.

Not too far away, a dark-skinned woman looked out the window of the clubhouse overlooking the resort’s lazy river pool and noticed the middle-aged woman baking in the sun. The dark-skinned lady thought about how she would love to catch a few sun rays herself, since it was good for her body in it’s conversion of Vitamin D.

But, she didn’t understand the point of sun bathing to the point of obsession. She recalled back one time while in Acapulco, while relaxing out by the pool with a good book in hand, noticing an elderly gentleman laying out next to her, covered in what looked like lesions of melanoma.

Of course, her dark skin gave her the protection to lay out a few hours longer than lighter skinned folks before she would ever have to worry about sun damage.

She loved her dark-reddish brown complexion. She thought what the Lord gave her was beautiful. She also loved the natural color of her lighter-skinned friends and family members. But she realized as she watched the lady below roast her skin into something deadly, was that everyone these days seem to think that the grass is always greener on the other side.

Fairer skinned people sometimes long to be darker, and darker skinned people sometimes long to be lighter. She thought of all those young girls in Africa investing in jars of skin cream to make their complexions a shade different so that they would think that they know beauty.

Or even yet, of all those young girls with curly or kinky hair who have yet to embrace their crown of glory in their nature texture, because they have hidden it away under the guise of straightners, relaxers, wigs and weaves.

The dark-skinned woman in the clubhouse wondered when people would wake up and realize that just being Human was beautiful in itself. Naturally. No alterations necessary. When will people wake up and just be. The dark-skinned woman took one last look out the window and turned to walk away, but not before first muttering to her self;

“I need to lose weight. Maybe today I’ll start my diet?”

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