White Woman Hair

I love volunteering in the kids classes at my church.  Class size varies, discipline issues vary, over all spirituality varies, but I can put up with all of that stuff if it lets me be with the kids.

On a recent Sunday morning, a fifth grade Latina girl came up to me unexpectedly and said:

"Ms. Rachel!  You have such beautiful hair!"

I looked into her beautiful brown eyes and thought to myself: do I really have beautiful hair?  Or have you be socialized to believe that blonde hair, blue eyes, white skin is beautiful?  Do you think you are beautiful? Why is being beautiful so important to us anyway?  I want you to know that you are more than just beautiful, but an intelligent, capable young woman worth so much more than how you look.

But of course, you cannot necessarily say that to a fifth grade girl, in church, in the middle of the memory verse game.

So, I told her thank you, and we went back to playing.

If I could go back again, I would have told her she was beautiful too.  Affirming her worth--even if I didn't agree with the source--is far more important than the sociological factors that make her need that.

I just had so many words jumbling around in my head that the right ones couldn't seem to squeak past my lips.

Even though I spent the rest of the morning looking for reasons to compliment her on how well she participated and telling her how beautiful she was, I'm not sure it really helped.

I was so disappointed in myself.