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Stop Telling Me You Want to Have Sex With Me
My skin color is not a fetish
I grew up bottled-fed on romantic novels. From Mills & Boons to Barbara Cartland to Danielle Steele, I read them all. The narratives were simple, boy meets girl, they hate each other in the beginning and then they fall madly in love, get married, have children, and live happily ever after. The couples were attracted to each other for genuine reasons and not because either one wanted to have sex with someone of a different skin color.
When I started dating at age 16, I yearned for a love story like one in the many novels that I had read. I constantly played those romantic narratives in my head. I dreamt of finding true love. I wanted to meet someone who loved me for me — for my character and for the way I made them feel. I was looking for my “prince,” my “happily ever after,” my “rock.” Never did I once imagine that some boys and men would be solely attracted to me because of my skin color and because they had heard stereotypes about Black women being good in bed or hypersexual. I was naive.
As my body transformed from childhood into adolescence, I’d had the occasional older white man gawk at me on the streets or invite me for a drink but I usually just ignored them. I didn’t think that these white men approached me because I was a Black girl. For me, they were just…
