Brown skin is beautiful, but my kid doesn’t believe it.

My gorgeous brown-skinned Asian kid just told me she wishes she had white skin because “it’s prettier.” My heart broke. It’s something I heard before from Kiddo when she was about 4.

I asked Sprout why she thought white skin is prettier, and she said “all the pictures are of pretty white-skinned girls.”

This kid consumes a lot of media featuring brown-skinned characters, but even so, at 6, she is still exposed to our racist advertising culture, where those who are looking glamorous are usually white women.

It does not help that her sister Sunny, who came to us at age 8, already knew about skin bleaching products from her family, and talked about how using them makes people “prettier.” It’s something I’ve heard their 14-year-old sister say more than once so I know it’s ingrained in her family culture. Sprout heard it from Sunny when she lived with us for nearly 2 years.

I clearly need to do better with brown-skinned role models for her in real life. That was a bit easier for Kiddo because I had some Black friends locally already, and finding a church with Black attendees wasn’t hard. But my usual circles don’t now include many Asian folks.

My husband and I suspect we need to move before too long to a more diverse community that includes Asian families. Sigh. We love where we live and we love our school district for its amazing special education programs. But we live in a very white community, and while Sprout has one Black friend in her class and one mixed-race bestie, and she’s got Kiddo who is mixed-race, she’s still surrounded by mostly white kids and parents and teachers and very few Asian role models. Sprout does adore our across-the-street neighbor and thinks she’s beautiful, and she’s Asian. I’m deeply grateful for that influence, not just because she’s a great role model but also because she’s an amazing neighbor and friend. But I’ll have to work on finding other Asian kids her age who look like Sprout to add to her day-to-day life, too.

I think this goes to show how important real-life influences are for kids. Sprout has quite a few books about Asian characters and books that talk about how brown skin and Asian-shaped eyes are gorgeous. She watches quite a few programs featuring brown-skinned girls. But none of that measures up to the importance of having real-life role models and friends.

I have to do better for my girl. Until then, I’ll tell her how gorgeous she is and have her repeat it after me. Maybe it’ll sink in a little bit. But my heart hurts.