Celebrating Diversity and My Life As a Mixed Girl

This past month there has been a wide array of milestones for women in media. Women of color, like Misty Copeland to become the first African-American woman to be pronounced as principal in the 75-year history of the American Ballet Theatre.  Women in sports, like Jen Welter, who was just hired as the first female coach of any kind in the NFL. She will start her journey in the National Football League as an assistant coaching intern for training camp and preseason to work with inside linebackers. These are milestones that may be here today and gone tomorrow, and as a society, we still have VERY long way to go, but I truly believe history is being made every. single. day.. History being made by women of all shapes, sizes and colors.

And yesterday, I was accidentally cc’d on an e-mail discussing the future of a major fitness brand, that brand shall remain nameless, but all I can say is that…they Just Did It, and will continue to do it the best of the very best. I was so pleased to see that their future looks diverse. Literally, that was in their plan spelled out clear as day…Where are we headed? DIVERSITY. I mean, I saw examples of girls that looked like me, and likely what my future kids will look like, and their kids and so on. Brown girls with freckles and green eyes, Asian girls with porcelain skin, representing the new edgy ‘All-American Girl’, tan skin every where I looked. It put the biggest smile on my face, and made me even more thankful for my life as a mixed girl, my life as me, Taylor Laine.

Let me tell you a little story. A few months ago Cory was out of town, and I watched a movie Called ‘Belle’. Belle is about a mixed girl growing up during the turn of the century. Her mother was an enslaved African women living in West Indies, and her father, a British Royal Navy Officer. When her mother passed, the father and his family took her in. She was given the best tutors, piano lessons, was not forced to do any form manual labor, but she was not allowed at the dinner table when company was over, and was constantly hidden from the public eye. There was this one gut-wrenching scene where she sits at her vanity, in her palace, thinking about the table she was not allowed to dine upon that evening. She rubbed, and pulled and tugged at her skin with such hatred and sadness that I could not help but ball my eyes out. Parts of her fit in, but never fully, never could she be free to love who she wanted, sit where she pleased, half in one world, and half in the other…where did she fit in?

I think every mixed woman has that thought at one period of time or another…Where do I fit in? I can tell you… it takes a while to figure out that we live in a time where we can just be who we are. We do not have to choose one side or another. We can be free to choose whom we love, how we like to dress, what music we want to listen to, and be thankful for the simple fact that we are made up of the best of both worlds, and anyone who has a problem with that can… (well you know the rest).

If we are being honest, my journey has not always been an easy one. My mom dressed me in The Gap, and I grew up loving Michael Bolton, yet I still had to endure hearing my first boyfriend, in middle school by the way,  tell my best friend he broke up with me because he didn’t want black children. Then girls who looked more like me than anyone else,  began to berate me because I wore white tights to school, and said I was trying to be white. Well NEWSFLASH…I am both black and white, but what should matter was not the clothes on my back or the color of my skin, but my heart and soul. The nature of who I am, and my core values. I had an wonderful upbringing, full of great friendships and tons of happy memories, so I do not want to you feeling sorry for me. I just felt the need to tell my story today.

Why? Well yesterday, I had an ordinary extraordinary day. A day that just made me so happy to be the person I am, the struggles and all, and the realization that I am so happy in the skin I am in. I started my day teaching a Barre class, and it was one of those hours that everyone was giving all they had, and I was giving it right back. From there I had to run to my new agency to do digitals with curly hair. Digitals are basically pictures on a digital camera, that the agency can send to a client to see what you look like without any re-touching. So many clients like me to come in with my hair straight, because it is easier to work with, and because it makes me look more ‘ethnically ambiguous’. That is model-talk for mixed race. I have been working so much lately, that my days off consist of me slicking my hair back in coconut oil and prep it for the next blow-out. Yesterday, I let me curls fly free, and my agency was so happy with how well I was doing, and began to explain how clients are constantly requesting girls like me, and I had a moment, a moment as a thirty year old woman who is lucky enough to represent her mixed sisters, in ads for some of the most All-American brands around. How lucky am I?

Then shortly after, while waiting to pick up the hubs at the airport, I decided to do a quick Vlog to discuss coconut oil, and snapped a selfie to express my curl-love on Instagram. I have been overwhelmed with all of peoples positive comments, and NO, likes and comments do not define my happiness, but  a couple of people even said, it was their favorite pic I have ever posted, and it was just me, Taylor Laine, stripped down to my most natural state. No Photoshop, curls for days, and I just wanted to say thank you. Thank you to everyone who has helped me along this journey. The journey to becoming a person who I really love on the inside…because that is what matters most.