Tiyanna

"This is who I am. Why are you mad?"

By Students of NYC

October 20^th, 2023

"It was in elementary school. I think I was in the fourth grade. I had these two boys every day coming up to me. I wasn’t a chubby kid, really, I was just a little thicker than everyone else. So every day they’d call me Hippo, Hippo, Hippo. This was when the app Musically was around. I've been dancing since I was four years old, basically all my life. It makes me feel free. I can express to myself. I’m not worried about things, I’m just focused on the movement and just the music that's playing through my mind over and over again. When I’m dancing, I feel beautiful. So, I would post dance videos with my friends, and they’d be in my comments like, 'Oh, you’re a hippo. You can’t dance.' I would read them and cry.

It's stupid. We were made to be different, not the same.

Everyone is unique in their own way. I feel like society just … they feel like women should be skinny and tall. And also, with skin tone — they feel like, oh, if you're really dark, you're not beautiful, but if you're lighter, you're more beautiful. And your hair should be a certain way. Oh, if you have straighter hair, you're more beautiful. If your hair is too kinky or too curly, you need to do something with it. I remember elementary school picture day, one boy was like, 'Oh, you look nice, but if you put some makeup on your nose, you'll look better.' Basically saying that I need to make my nose look smaller. I'm like, okay, I know what I look like. I wake up and see myself every day. People just kept saying the same thing over again. It really affected me. And growing up, it went throughout me and went deep.

Sometimes I still get insecurities. But now, I'm starting to love myself.

It takes a while to learn how to love yourself, because I'm still trying to do that now. I'm just like, I like the way I look. This is who I am. Why are you mad? Because I'm this way? I had to learn that people are just unhappy with themselves, so they reflected it on me, trying to make me feel bad with them.

And here's something that I like about myself — I'm kind to people. Even if everyone isn’t kind to me, I'm still kind to others because it's like, it's just life. You can't be angry all your life. Yes, people hurt me. But you only have one life to live ... why spend it being so angry at the world, when the world itself did absolutely nothing?"