A Girl Like Me and Journey to the Unknown

In the video “A Girl Like Me,” I became aware of the struggles African American women face with their identity. The girls in the video explained that light skin is more attractive than dark skin, and that their hair has to look natural and not kinky. Many of the girls explained that their aunts or friends had tried to bleach their skin to make it look lighter to feel more attractive. The girls feel that their identity crisis is affected by the fact that they do not know their history, they know they are from Africa but not the tribe or country. This is important because each tribe has different morals and traditions. In the video the author ran a test with little African American children and a white doll and black doll. 15 of the 21 children chose the white doll over the black doll because it was white. It was interesting to see that every culture struggles with their identity and appearances. It seems that everyone wants to be a tall skinny blonde with long hair, exactly what a Barbie looks like. The girl at the end of the movie put society’s expectations perfectly, she said that she must try to look how society wants her to look because she does not know her background or what she should be because she does not know where she came from.

In “Journey to the Unknown,” Lizbeth Meija is excited because she had her coming of age party, but she went on to show how her view of becoming a women is different from her friends’ views. Lizbeth’s friends Marilyn and Yasmine are coming of age in a different way than Lizbeth. Marilyn and Yasmine are both pregnant, and they go on to explain that their boyfriends don’t want to have anything do to with them now that they are pregnant. Lizbeth fears for her friends because her own mother had three children from three different fathers and she and her mother have struggled throughout her life. Marilyn did not have the baby because her brother beat her up and she miscarried because of the beating. This documentary is a little biased in the way that it only showed girls and they depicted boys as not dependable and not in for the long haul. But overall it was a good documentary to show how children can learn from their parents mistakes and their views of premarital sex are altered due to their struggles they went through.