REMEMBERING DAYS IN THE SUN

A friend came over on yesterday. She had just arrived from a vacation at the beach. Being of the lighter hue she place her arm next to mine to prove that she really could get darker. I chuckled and commented that her trying to get as dark as me was like me trying to get as dark as Naomi Sims. We both were melanin deficient. Melanin is the stuff that determines skintone. It's what makes African Americans a beautiful chocolate rainbow.

Our house tends to be full of women for the most part and we all laughed at the comparison/contrast of skin color as we watched our family, whose tone ranged from deep dark brown to very light brown--eyecolor ranging from brownish black to hazel. Skin color can be amusing sometimes.

When I mentioned Naomi Sims, my niece who is a young adult corrected us (twice), thinking that we meant Naomi Campbell. We shot back, no we meant Naomi Sims.

"She was "the first black model", we retorted. Back in 1969, we all ran out and bought the issue of Life Magazine with Naomi's photo on the front. We couldn't believe it. A black model on the front of Life. She was beautiful! To don the cover of a magazine (other than Ebony or Jet, or black publications) was almost unheard of. Naomi's photo was the talk of the black neighborhoods.

I decided to google Naomi Sims just to see what she looked like today and what she was doing. To my surprise there is a lot of information on her on the site and she even has makeup and fashion. You should check it out. In light of the video, "A Girl Like Me", I found this comment on the site interesting. It states:

At 13, Naomi Sims was already 5 feet 10 inches in height. She felt tall, dark and different. Sent from her native Oxford, Mississippi, to better her education in Pittsburgh, she felt she was "a loner-teased and intensely disliked in high school." But family training and her Catholic faith taught her early to walk with dignity and pride.

THE HERITAGE OF NAOMI SIMS

	“I gave them elegance and regality”

It seems so ironic now, especially since we have gone from being almost invisible to being highly visible and exploited. We began with role models like Naomi Sims whose "authoritative ebony inspired all women of color to pride" and now we are face with the image of the black woman being degraded and stepped on.

I'm just thankful that there are young African American women who take pride in themselves, despite attempts to silence them through invisibility. Stand tall young sistas!