Miss SA 2023 Finalist Melissa Nayimuli On Finally Embracing Her Skin Tone
Miss SA 2023 Finalist Melissa Nayimuli On Finally Embracing Her Skin Tone. Whether we want to admit it or not, just like beauty, colorism plays a major role in the entertainment industry. Quire a number of times, many artists’ skin tone was either an advantage or disadvantage when it came to bagging gigs.
The likes of Pearl Thusi, Sho Madjozi, and Masasa Mbangeni have all touched on how colorism has affected them. In Pearl’s case, she has opened up that she was deemed not black enough for some opportunities. On the other hand, many dark toned female personalities have cried foul that they get sidelined a lot.
Masasa, who is one of the most talented actresses in the country has also had issues with colorism. A year ago, the award winning actress and TV personality shared that she has not always been confident about her appearance. According to Masasa, back in the day, she used to apply a certain beauty cream to at least appear lighter.
Another personality, Melissa Nayimuli has just shared Masasa’s sentiments. The Miss SA 2023 Top 5 finalist states he battled with colorism, since she was a young girl. She grew up in a society, where the measure of beauty was in the skin tone. What’s worse, her sister and mom were light in color, which made her feel somehow.
Thankfully, as the years passed, her perception changed. Mellisa saw herself as this beautiful being, and her confidence grew. She did very well on the Miss SA stage, showing off that beauty is skin deep.
“Colourism is something that I have dealt with since I was a child. I think whether it is in your community, at home when you are playing with your friends, so when you go to school, that whole thing of the lighter skinned you are then the more beautiful you are – that was drilled into us to a point where you also wanted to be light-skinned. And I think that it was more challenging because my mother, is light-skinned and my older sister is as well, so I would look at them and think why I don’t look like them and I look more like my dad. Until we grew up, and thank God we did, I started looking at myself in the mirror and being confident in my skin.” — @melissanayimuli
