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If you’ve ever been on the internet, there’s a good chance that you’ve seen the viral video “Scarlett Takes A Tumble.” We all laughed at the girl doing too much and suffering the consequences. But I doubt any of us thought about the consequences of what being a star in a video of this nature would do to one’s self esteem, self image and self worth. Now, ten-years later, the star of the video, whose real name is Paige Reynolds, shares what going viral at 15 did to her and how she began working on the task of loving herself.
“Having the whole Scarlett takes a tumble video blow up was really crazy. It was definitely surreal. I still remember the day, I logged on and saw that it had 200,000 views. I cried. I definitely cried a lot. For hundreds of thousands of people to have seen me like this, it was definitely a hard thing to come to terms with confidence wise. And then what made it worse was definitely the comments that some people put up. They would say ‘Oh you’re stupid to put this up.’ It was several really bad racial slurs. People would look for any opportunity to call me bad names. Kind of like 15-year-old me scrolling through all this information. That stuff can break you down as a woman. But I thank God for my mom because my mom was like, ‘One, you don’t need to be reading any more messages. So you can just stop that.’ And then two, she was like, ‘In this life you can either own the skin you’re in and learn how to be comfortable in it or you can constantly let the negative things other people say tear you down. So that was this opportunity for me to have an attitude shift to really being with my skin and comfortable with being all of this that I am. Dark skin, beautiful and big and larger than life.
When I was a little kid at school, I used to get teased a lot because my neck is darker. Kids would say, ‘Look at your black neck, look at it it’s so dirty.’ Even though my neck is not dirty, it’s just black.
I remember one day, the friend that I had said [to another friend], ‘You’re pretty for a dark skinned girl.’ And that friend’s mom was like, ‘Hold up, no you’re not about to say… You’re pretty period. You’re beautiful period. And your skin just makes you more beautiful not less beautiful. All this chocolate, melanin, good, shining skin, this is a beautiful thing. This is something that you should love about yourself.’ And hearing her say that to her daughter, I was like maybe I should also love the chocolate of my skin too. And so I kind of like embarked on this journey of just loving this skin that I’m in.”
What it means to be a dark skinned girl in this society is to be a part of this elite club. We are the chocolate sisters, reminiscent of the Dora Milaje. We are just like everything right now. We are melanin popping, golden skin, the undertones are crazy. To be dark skinned now is to be part of this really elite club. Which is crazy because it didn’t always used to be like this. It used to be that being dark skinned was considered ugly or dirty, less than or not as pretty as light skinned people or White people. I..’s definitely what a time to be alive, to be part of this club that’s praised now when we used to be put down.”
