046
BLUE-JEAN M
Nyah Hardmon, 16, she/her/hers My whole life has been them funny!” one predominantly white Looking back, this response my community after the other. melanin tended to provoke didn’t
My family has always moved a lot, yet each new town lacked the ‘new girl’ glow that seems to compromise almost every teen movie. Instead, I tended to be one of few black student in my class. This difference only super-enhanced itself once I began to excel academically, into a realm where there were even fewer students that looked like me. It didn’t take long for me to become accustomed to sticking out, to always being the first person spotted in a room, and the last person offered a passing-by smile. As a token minority, I had the pleasure of getting tormented constantly, and while the undermining was often a product of unconscious mechanisms, the constant stereotyping and generally low expectations took a toll. I realized the full extent of the battlefield I was thrown into during high school, where the halls reeked with lingering stares and I convinced myself that my forehead reaped a note that screamed: “Tell me all of your racist jokes, I promise I’ll find
affect me as much as it should have. When you’ve been breaded to battle since the day you were born, you develop a personal armor of sorts. Every black woman is born with their own armor; a second skin to protect them from the trials they will inevitably face. Our armor provides a way for us to make it through the day, to finally be comfortable in a world determined to condemn us. My freshman year of high school, I built my armor out of my sense of style. I began to use my clothes to make sure that the first thing people noticed about me was not my race but what was situated on my melanin skin. First impressions can be fatal, and when you’re black it’s as if your skin does the talking for you. People tend to take one look at your skin and assume every aspect of your life. But when you make people notice your perfectly fitted jeans or satin blouse, before they even have time to process your race, you’re immediately nipping all assumptions before they can even form. As I started putting more effort into the way I dressed, I be-
