Thankful for being me

On Monday it was Thanksgiving Day and I spent some time thanking God for the person He made me. I'm an eternal optimist who believes that everyone God created has grand beauty that should not be tampered with. But largely because of the influence of Hollywood many have come to believe that natural beauty is not enough; that everything must be done to enhance it. So blacks marry white folks in a bid to improve their colour, only to end up getting "white-faced niggers", according to Claud in Flannery O'Connor's "Revelation".

God does not make mistakes

Claud's conclusion may sound a little racist but it contains some grain of truth. Think of the people that bleach their skins and use an assortment of creams on their faces in order to lighten up (beautify). And then melanin gets corrupted and the skin develops a weird pigmentation and people start casting twisted glances upon them, wondering what happened to their faces. This is what happened to Kimberly Jones aka Lil' Kim. Such a gifted African-American rapper, Lil' Kim was never satisfied with her natural beauty that she confessed to journalist Allison Samuels: "Guys always cheated on me with women who were European looking...really beautiful women that left me thinking, 'How can I compete with that?' Being a regular black girl wasn't good enough."

So Lil' Kim thought she would find real beauty through plastic surgery; breast implants, a nose job and changing her skin complexion all to extinguish her black features for the more 'beautiful' white features. Sadly, everything went wrong from the pain to the new looks; rather than become a pretty sight, her new look provoked pity making her fans wonder why she had to go through all that despite her extraordinary rap talent. 

It may be a cliché but it really is true that God doesn't make mistakes. So accepting and being confident in the way we were created is the best way to find peace of mind needed to bring out our best attributes and inspire the best in others as well.