Brown Eye-YAH-Voes Are Beautiful, Too

Mitike and I just had our first mother-daughter talk about skin color. I know -- she's only 2. And I know -- research shows that children do not begin noticing skin color until about age 3, and that they do not possess an awareness of "race" as an idea until 4 or 5. But there we were -- TK perched on the potty, me sitting across from her on the step-stool -- talking about how brown skin is just as beautiful as peach-colored skin.

It's Disney's fault, of course -- and Costco's. In an attempt to save money on diapers, I purchased an enormous cost-saver box of toddler pull-ups, only to open the box at home and find that half the diapers had blonde-haired, blue-eyed, peach-skinned Cinderella plastered across their fronts. The other half of the diapers -- in a Disney attempt to be more multicultural, I suppose -- placed red-haired Ariel and black-haired, brown-skinned Jasmine just behind Cinderella. English-major Mommy read this message: Cinderella is still the one to which you should all aspire, little diaper-wearing girls, but we suppose these girls are okay, too.

I opened the box with TK standing right next to me -- clapping her hands with joy to see all the beautiful princesses. "Pretty!" she exclaimed. "Pretty!" My heart sank. I had already screwed up! I had unwittingly opened the door to a world I didn't want my beautiful little girl to encounter until she firmly and ardently believed that her brown skin, brown eyes, and black hair were unquestioningly, undoubtedly beautiful. I bit my lip, watching TK joyfully pull princess diapers from the box.

"TK," I said suddenly. "I'm going downstairs for a sec. I'll be right back."

She barely heard me. Cinderella's blue-eyed gaze had already begun to work its spell. I had to move fast. I ran down the stairs and into the kitchen, where we keep two tubs of markers and crayons. TK calls them "eye-YAH-voes". I grabbed all the brown ones I could find, and then dashed back upstairs.

TK's eyebrows went up at the sight of the eye-YAH-voes. She knew the rule was to keep them in the kitchen. "Mama?" she asked. I smiled and then scooped her up -- she clutched a Cinderella diaper in her hands -- and set her gently on the potty.

"Let's make Cinderella beautiful," I said, and handed TK a brown crayon. I picked up a brown permanent marker, and proceeded to draw swirly brown curls over Cinderella's blonde hair. TK giggled and began to scribble all over Cinderella's face. "More, Mama, more!" she laughed. We scribbled all over the diaper, making it -- well -- ugly.

THIS was how I was going to teach my daughter that her skin color -- the loveliest color of coffee with a bit of milk -- was beautiful? This was more of a lesson in graffiti, or in modern art. Or worse, this was calling too much attention to an issue of which she would not be aware for years.

I looked down at the diaper that lay stretched between my lap and TK's. It was almost completely brown now -- an unfortunate color for a diaper. I took a deep breath, dismayed at my first failure as a "white" momma to give my "black" child a healthy racial identity.

"All done eye-YAH-voe!" TK handed me the crayon and then held the diaper up proudly, tilting it at different angles, as if she were studying it. "Beautiful!" she proclaimed finally, and I started to laugh. I touched her hands and her face and her little feet and murmured, "Beautiful, too." She nodded seriously, then parroted, "Beautiful, too."

The Cinderella diapers are gone, now -- peed into, pooped on, thrown in a plastic bag and then hurled into the Juneau landfill. Now TK wears diapers with pink and green dragons on them -- and she still insists on coloring the dragons brown while she sits on the potty. My Costco purchase seems only to have increased TK's range of artistic mediums.

But the other night at bedtime, as we read the book "Amazing Grace", TK gently touched the page where the 11-year-old African American protagonist stands up in class to volunteer to be Peter Pan. "Beautiful," TK murmured. "Beautiful." And although my little girl applies that new-found adjective to chalkboards and the sides of buses and restaurant menus and the swirly design seagull droppings make on the dock, she means it when she uses it.

I just hope the understanding sticks.