Sheri Crawley’s inspiration for a day for brown skin girls came from her daughters Laila, 8, (left) and Aliya, 6 (right). Photos/Sheri Crawley (Courtesy Photo)
After relocating to a Midwest suburban neighborhood in 2010, Sheri Crawley’s noticed a change in her bubbly, energetic and confident daughter Laila. Her daughter began attending kindergarten at predominantly White school and began longing for long, blonde hair like her classmates. Crawley, who has read several studies about skin bias such as the 1940s Doll Test by Dr. Kenneth and Mamie Clark, where young Black children thought White dolls were prettier than darker skinned dolls, knew she had to curtail her daughter’s perception of her brown skin.
“We can’t pretend skin tones don’t matter in our country. Girls on an everyday basis are dealing with issues in their classrooms and even in their relationships,” said Crawley. “We have so few representations of women in a positive light. We need to have a discussion now with our children.” After praying and seeking direction from God, Crawley said she and her husband set out to create a doll for their daughters that would celebrate their appearance and heritage. The result is the Pretty Brown Girl Doll.
“As we look at the state of Black America, we are further away now than we have ever been to our culture, our ethnicity and our ancestry,” said Crawley. “It’s time to get back to the basics and really celebrate it.” Since the release of the first doll, the Crawley family has expanded Pretty Brown Girl to books-journals such as “My First Day of School” by Sherri Crawley, baby gear, Obama T-shirts, wristbands, pledge cards and curriculum-based workshops held by groups across the country.
This month, the Pretty Brown Girl Foundation is gearing up to launch the first International Pretty Brown Skin Day set for Feb. 23. That day is to be a day of empowerment and encouragement designed to help young girls appreciate their varying and diverse complexions and skin tones while the develop self-esteem and confidence.
Partnering with churches, sororities, families and other organizations across the globe, the Pretty Brown Girls Foundation will help launch Pretty Brown Girl Clubs, creating a support system for girls to join in the conversation on self-worth and self-esteem.
As more and more women and girls become involved in the conversation, Crawley has seen her daughters evolve in the process. Her daughters proudly recite their Pretty Brown Girl pledge now.
“My daughters know who they are now. They know their worth. Pretty brown girls is a vocabulary word that they use now in communicating and describing others. They no longer ask for blonde hair dolls.”
See PrettyBrownGirl.com for a list of events in celebration of the first Pretty Brown Girls Day.
article by Krishana Davis via afro.com
“We can’t pretend skin tones don’t matter in our country. Girls on an everyday basis are dealing with issues in their classrooms and even in their relationships,” said Crawley. “We have so few representations of women in a positive light. We need to have a discussion now with our children.” After praying and seeking direction from God, Crawley said she and her husband set out to create a doll for their daughters that would celebrate their appearance and heritage. The result is the Pretty Brown Girl Doll.
“As we look at the state of Black America, we are further away now than we have ever been to our culture, our ethnicity and our ancestry,” said Crawley. “It’s time to get back to the basics and really celebrate it.” Since the release of the first doll, the Crawley family has expanded Pretty Brown Girl to books-journals such as “My First Day of School” by Sherri Crawley, baby gear, Obama T-shirts, wristbands, pledge cards and curriculum-based workshops held by groups across the country.
This month, the Pretty Brown Girl Foundation is gearing up to launch the first International Pretty Brown Skin Day set for Feb. 23. That day is to be a day of empowerment and encouragement designed to help young girls appreciate their varying and diverse complexions and skin tones while the develop self-esteem and confidence.
Partnering with churches, sororities, families and other organizations across the globe, the Pretty Brown Girls Foundation will help launch Pretty Brown Girl Clubs, creating a support system for girls to join in the conversation on self-worth and self-esteem.
As more and more women and girls become involved in the conversation, Crawley has seen her daughters evolve in the process. Her daughters proudly recite their Pretty Brown Girl pledge now.
“My daughters know who they are now. They know their worth. Pretty brown girls is a vocabulary word that they use now in communicating and describing others. They no longer ask for blonde hair dolls.”
See PrettyBrownGirl.com for a list of events in celebration of the first Pretty Brown Girls Day.
article by Krishana Davis via afro.com
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Awesome idea. I’m sharing with my wife and daughter (they don’t have a problem with their pretty brown skin, and neither do I).
Wonderful, Sanctified Brother! Have a fantastic “Pretty Brown Skin Day” on Saturday!
I admire her very much for her extra ordinary initiatives in this regard. From my personal experience living in the UK, i bitterly feel the experiences of ‘skin-bias’ acutely apparent in every social strata. Being a South Asian ‘brown skinned’ I know how the society discouragingly react in every social situations and I believe this is due to the ‘inherent’ negative stereotype surrounding ‘skin color’ among white people. Hence, her initiatives are not only pioneering, it sets a landmark for many generations to come. Ecoblogs recognize the ‘cultural and ethnic’ diversity as the fundamental core of the conservation biology and would be honored to promote her work in anyway we can therefore I would kindly request ‘like minded’ folks to come up with ideas to collaborate with Ecoblogs in this remit even if it could be small measure of action as such blog article linking the importance of challenging the color bias in a ‘non-invasive’ manner like her work and to link that in with the core philosophy of the conservation biology. Saludos!
Thank you, Ecoblogs! Please spread the story and we absolutely support you in championing diversity and challenging color bias. Thank you for such thoughtful feedback.
Thank you for the kind reply and I am spiritedly motivated to read it. I feel the education on cultural and social diversity are pivotal and often these are not ‘mainstreamed’ in the current ‘western-white-dominated’ education model both in formal and informal settings. Ecoblogs would like to propose to collaborate with GBN so that newly evolving Ecoblogs can learn and benefits from long standing GBN. In turns, our readers will have the chance to read GBN updates and visit the site and augment their current knowledge base. Therefore, I would like to ask for your kind permission to link your site with our one in the side bar Link Category as ‘Our Allies’. Let me know your thought on that and perhaps GBN could do the same to incorporate Ecoblogs in its homepage. Saludos! Ecoblogs Team
Hello, I am Sheri Crawley, founder of the Pretty Brown Girl Movement and would be very interested in touching base with you regarding this subject matter in the UK
Greetings Sheri. Pleased to hear from you and I honor your work and I have disseminated your work on celebrating ‘Pretty Brown Movement’ to other cyber platforms. Considerable work and attention are needed to bring about non white social, cultural and environmental movement in white dominated society across the Atlantic and your philosophy echos and positively coincide and influence my work and project indeed. Hence, I would like to invite you to join Ecoblogs as our honorary adviser. I feel your presence will highly enrich our work and the environmental and conservation philosophy of th Ecoblogs that are grounded to social and cultural diversity incorporating rich ethnicity across the continents. If you would kindly reply to my list server address I would appreciate that very much. The e-mail address is ecosyslistserver@gmail.com. The hotspot link of the Ecoblogs is http://www.ecosysblogs.wordpress.com. Kindly look into our site and if you go to our ‘who is who?’ page you will able to see the folks who have joined in so far. I look forward to your kind reply in the above e-mail address. Saludos! Ashraf
Reblogged this on Just BE Online.
Thank you for the reblog, Just BE Online!
I liked that she got up and did something about it. kudos to you.
[…] Midwest Mother Launches 1st “Pretty Brown Skin Day” on Feb. 23rd Sheri Crawley, a Midwestern mother of two girls is gearing up to launch the first Pretty Brown Girl Foundation International Pretty Brown Skin Day set for Feb. 23. That day is to be a day of empowerment and encouragement designed to help young girls appreciate their varying and diverse complexions and skin tones while the develop self-esteem and confidence. Partnering with churches, sororities, families and other organizations across the globe, the Pretty Brown Girls Foundation will help launch Pretty Brown Girl Clubs, creating a support system for girls to join in the conversation on self-worth and self-esteem. {Good Black News} […]
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