Nyakim ‘Queen of Dark’ Gatwech

Last month, model Nyakim Gatwech shut down the Emmy Awards with her stunning good looks. Her photos went viral as her skin was just as luminescent and ethereal as her dress. In a world where ideal standards of beauty still try to dominate, she gave the world a massive awakening. Once again, melanin dominates in a way that brings the world to their knees.

While Nyakim effortlessly radiates, but the strides it took for her to simply love herself were not so effortless. Women are misguided by mass marketing that influences us to change ourselves, inside and out. These markets exploit our natural insecurities encouraging us to find ways to change our personalities in order to keep a man, or change our looks in order to be “beautiful.” The way in which we are taught to change our facial appearance remains in the spectrum of whiteness. Now imagine a dark skinned woman trying to find the words and images to love herself. The South Sudanese model didn’t give into society’s disrespect.

Nyakim says: “I never had a problem with the way I look until I came to the U.S. and that’s when I started looking at myself in the mirror and I’m like ‘wow, I do look different.’ That’s when I finally realized that my skin was different or was ‘bad’ because kids were laughing at me. Kids was making comments like ‘go take a shower,’ kids was telling me ‘we can’t see you in the dark.’ I’m hearing all these comments and I was like ‘what is happening? Is something wrong with my skin? I can shower and take this off?’ They’re literally scared of what I look like and that hurt.”

When she was in high school, she participated in a local fashion show and the rest is history.

While our younger years tend to be the worst for our insecurities, Nyakim wasn’t having it.

Nowadays she encourages other women and writes about her experiences on Instagram:

The one about her Uber driver’s rude ass question: “don’t take this offensive but if you were given 10 thousand dollars 💵 would you bleach your skin for that amount?”

Her response:

“I couldn’t even respond I started laughing so hard. Than he said so that a no and I was like hell to the f*king yeah that a no, why on earth would I ever bleach this beautiful melanin God bless with me. Than he said so you look at it as a blessing? I just 🤦‍♂️ you won’t believe the kind of questions I get and the kind of looks I get for having this skin.”

The self proclaimed “Queen of Dark” is the embodiment of why black women are referred to as Goddesses as she gathered her strengths to turn all the negativity into something positive for herself and for others.