Kelli Santos

I grew up in Hawaii where being Asian automatically made you part of the majority. Being surrounded by people of the same ethnic background allowed me to shamelessly embrace my culture and share it with the people in my life. Nevertheless, when I was younger, I was often teased about how dark skinned I am. Boys told me they didn’t like me because I was too dark and called me names. For a while, it made me insecure about the color of my skin. Today, I embrace my skin color as a symbol of my mixed ethnic background which is increasingly rare on the ‘mainland.’ Brown is beautiful, and I wouldn’t want to be any other way.

- KELLI SANTOS