This 11-Year-Old Turned Her Bullies' Taunts Into A Best-Selling T-Shirt
When Kheris Rogers was a pre-teen, she told her older sister that she wanted to stay in the bath longer, in the hopes that her skin would get lighter. That's when her sister, Taylor Pollard, knew that she needed to focus on cultivating Kheris' sense of self-worth and beauty.
Kheris had already endured years of bullying, even at that young age, mostly centered on her skin color.
Taylor decided to post a photo celebrating her sister's natural beauty to Twitter, and captioned the image "my sister is only 10 but already royalty." And Taylor added a hashtag, without knowing at the time how impactful it would be:
#FlexinInHerComplexion. The saying was one that the sisters' grandmother would use to encourage the girls to embrace their skin color and love themselves.
The next day, Kheris had gone viral.
"It was up to almost half a million likes and she had just as many retweets on Twitter," Taylor said.
It was an overwhelming reaction. And Taylor acted on it: she decided right away that the sisters should make t-shirts with their grandmother's saying on it.
Before they knew it, "Flexin' in my Complexion" had caught fire. Lupita Nyong'o, Alicia Keys, and Snoop Dogg were among the celebrities that wore and talked about the shirts online. To date, the sisters have sold more than 10,000 shirts.
Today, Kheris says, when she looks in the mirror, she sees "black beauty. I see melanin popping. I see anything you can think of."
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