The Queen of Dark

The Queen of Dark
(“Darkest Skin on the Planet”)
@Asim Deb

Nyakim Gatwech (born January 27, 1993) is a model of South Sudanese descent. Her news went viral after people hailed her for having the “darkest skin on the planet”, and that earned her a spot in the Guinness World Records. However, the world record is hoax, as Guinness says they do not “monitor records for skin tone”, but her beauty is indeed 100 per cent real. At her young age, she became popular as Queen of the Dark. Soon, she became well known as “The Queen of Dark”, and also as the “Monarch of the Night.” Although she has never been to South Sudan, Nyakim considers herself to be South Sudanese.

Intentional or sub-consciously, we often believe ‘white’ to be beautiful and ‘black’ to be ugly. The fairer you’re the chances of your success in any field be it professional or personal goes up. This mindset has been passed on over the centuries where still a dusky person is looked at with pity. A girl with darker complexion faces the blatant racism even by her known people.

The world of modelling is no different with black-skinned models falling short of the fair maidens. But one name is challenging the cliché and shattering the stereotypes like a boss. She is Nyakim Gatwech, the South Sudanese model who is forcing the world to look beyond their fair-tinted glasses.

Nyakim Gatwech’s parents had to flee from South Sudan due to the second Sudanese Civil War, and they reached Ethiopia where Gatwech was born. Then they migrated to Kenya and took refuge in camp until they finally migrated to US, Gatwech was only 14 years old then. After taking part in a fashion show, she considered a modeling career. She appeared in promotional posters for the 2017 film Jigsaw. Today she has over 985,000 followers on Instagram. And the Minnesota based model gained huge online attention after Yahoo News published her unpleasant conversation with an Uber driver. She was publicly shamed when the driver asked her if she’d bleach her skin for 10,000 British Pounds. Nyakim laughed and dismissed, ‘Why on earth would I ever bleach this beautiful melanin? 

“When I saw Tyra Banks, I was like, ‘Wow, if she can do it, I can do it too,’” she says. “But that was before I realized that my skin tone is not really accepted like that in this industry.” In her determination to join the ranks of Alek Wek, Duckie Thot and other world-renowned dark-skinned models, Nyakim makes her own breaks.

“When I was in middle school, I didn’t know how to cope with the negative comments I received daily. Back then, the way I dealt with the negative comments was either locking myself in my room and crying or trying to fight the people that said mean things about me. I told my sister, “kids are making fun of me because of my complexion. What do I do? I wanna bleach my skin and all this stuff.” She told me that skin bleaching wasn’t the way to go about it.

Nyakim Gatwech is teaching the young girls to be comfortable in own skin. Her posts reflect the confidence of the young role model who is inspiring millions around the world. While we are used to ‘Monday Motivation’ posts on the social media, Nyakim believes in posting ‘Melanin Monday’ pictures on her Instagram account. She is breaking the norms of ideal beauty with her fiercely gorgeous avatar.

“Would he call his wife or his daughter a freak of nature?” wonders Nyakim Gatwech, the 29-year-old model targeted in a racism scandal that shook an Ivy League University. “His words are not just affecting me, but dark-skinned girls in general, dark-skinned girls who go to Columbia too, that none of us can imagine – especially coming from a psychiatrist.”

Jeffrey Lieberman has ranked among the US’s foremost clinicians for more than two decades. As the longtime chair of Columbia University’s psychiatry department, he was especially respected for his research and published discoveries about schizophrenia. But the former president of the American Psychiatric Association became known for something else. Seemingly out of nowhere, Lieberman retweeted a photo of Gatwech and described her as a “freak of nature”; this was after the original post used the pronoun it in reference to the woman while making the false claim that she was listed in the Guinness book for having the world’s darkest skin. The fallout for Lieberman was swift. Within days he was suspended from his post at Columbia University, stripped of his Psychiatrist-in-Chief position of the University, and was asked to resign as Director of the New York State Psychiatric Institute – a post that paid him almost $250,000. In addition to widespread condemnation online, Lieberman faced scorn from many of his collaborators in New York’s elite medical community. “He’s a destructive personality who has done a great deal of damage, who is only now being held accountable after decades of impunity,’’ In an email to University cohorts, Lieberman wrote: “An apology from me to the Black community, to women and to all of you is not enough.” Before his tweet and his Twitter account vanished, the model, Nyakim Gatwech, took that screenshot.

For the better part of a decade, in between jobs as a Minneapolis daycare teacher and at a Buffalo, New York, Panera Bread, and while pursuing a degree in education, Gatwech collaborated with photographer friends to produce her own photoshoots, posting her favorite snaps to Instagram. One of the most uncomfortable moments, Nyakim recalls, came when the classroom lights went down for the projector; when she raised her hand, a classmate would think nothing of asking the teacher: “Can you even see her?”

“For my first three big campaigns, I was the one pretending to be my manager,” says Nyakim. Unsure of what to charge for the work, she Googled possible rates. Nyakim who attended Black Lives Matter rallies in the Twin Cities after Floyd’s killing, stated something she noticed: “When an agency already has that Sudanese dark-skinned model, they will just continue to work with her, it’s not a sort of diversity. Why can there only be one?”

Gatwech’s social media ascent has continued, but she has yet to land a deal with a major modeling agency. “There hasn’t been an opportunity where a brand was like; ‘We want to put you on the cover of a magazine…’,” says Nyakim, who splits time between New York and LA. “At least not yet. I’m still believing in God’s plan.”

Today, she stands as one of the most renowned and well-compensated celebrities worldwide, thanks to her unique beauty. Her striking features have garnered her a massive online following on Instagram, where enthusiasts can discover more of her captivating photographs.

In an age where people are going after skin brightening and whitening creams, this South Sudanese model is embracing her dark complexion with pride. Her moonshine dark skin has earned her the nickname ‘Queen of Dark’ and it just goes to prove that beauty comes in all shades.

Ref: https://vocal.media/interview/meet-the-queen-of-the-dark

Read more at:
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/58910291.cms?utm_source=contentofinterest&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=cppst

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