So um, this topic is a bit strange but it is a thing…for Black women so I feel this is the place to talk about it.
Yesterday, I noticed that my sister retweeted this:
RT this if you’re a black girl with this scar on your knee…trying to see something. pic.twitter.com/HsYkPP0vx2
— Hoesaphine Baker (@jadoreadjones) June 27, 2017
When I saw it, I didn’t think much of it. As a child, my sister, the “wild” one of the family, who’s not really all that wild, always managed to find herself involved in some type of accident. There was the time she was rushed to the hospital after she flew off the tire swing and we thought she’d broken her leg. There was the time she was scratched petting a “stray” cat in the neighborhood, the time she broke her hymen climbing the ladder to our bunk bed. (I can still hear that blood curdling scream.)
And then there was the accident that resulted in the scar on her knee. From what I can remember, we were in middle school. She was inside for a recreation period because it was apparently raining outside, where her class would have been had weather permitted. Inside, there just so happened to be a treadmill. My sister was running on it and then slipped, skinning both of her knees in the process.
I remember that even with almost daily applications of Coco Butter, it took forever for the skin to grow back, let alone for it to begin scarring. And when it finally did scar, the mark remained, dark at first and then fading slightly. But like I said, in my mind, my sister was just more clumsy than most people. Even today.
What I didn’t notice was the number of retweets, likes and comments the original status received.
26,000 retweets.
17,000 likes.
622 comments.
Black women were astonished to look down at their own knees and find that they, like Logan Browning, also had a scar on their knee.
If you delve into the stories, many of these Black women, like my sister, will tell you that they acquired these scars when they were young.
If you hadn’t gathered from this introduction, I don’t have a scar on my knee. And now that I think about it, it’s something I’m very proud of. And while that’s nothing to be proud of at all, I know where the feeling originates.
My mother and my grandmother.
Growing up, both my mother and grandmother warned my sister and I about keeping our legs unscathed. If we wanted to have pretty, smooth legs when we grew up, we were not to scar them up as little girls because the scars would remain…forevah (in my Cardi B. voice.)
Even as a child, I recognized that my mom and grandma were more dramatic than they needed to be; still, I took their words to heart. I enjoy my fair share of outdoor activity and sport. I ran track in middle school, played volleyball in high school etc. But I was careful.
Now, that I think about it, it wasn’t just because of my foremothers’ words, I saw proof of their warnings manifest.
One day, running down our cul-de-sac to a friend’s house, I tripped or stumbled or something and my body, propelled by my own speed, went sliding across the concrete. The incident resulted in three different scars, one on my wrist, one above my elbow and a much smaller and less severe one on my leg. Not my knee mind you. I was probably around ten when I collected those scars. And today, at nearly 30-years-old, you can still see remnants of the ones on my wrist and above my elbow.
The skin is flush with my own but the marks from that day remain.
This is what my momma and ‘n’em were talking about. They knew from experience from their own rough and tumble years that these things don’t go away. I know my mother has a deep gash in a back from some type of incident with a glass table. And my grandmother, who died in her eighties had a body that also bore marks of her journey on this earth.
I lied. This is not just a Black thing. White kids were just a rough and tumble as we were growing up. They too have scars…I just don’t recall seeing any of them. Perhaps our scars stay around longer or show up more prevalently on our darker skin. I’m no dermatologist and I can’t call it.
BuzzFeed wrote about this story and the reaction it received. And in the comment section, one person argued about the importance or necessity of the story. Like what was the point and purpose. There isn’t a large, life-changing one, other than unification.
We all know that our scars tell stories. For me, I know they remind me that some of those childhood memories really did happen. (I don’t know about you but my childhood memories can seem like a land of fantasy and make believe sometimes.) But this picture, the tweet and the response to it, also can serve as yet another way to unite Black women across a variety of regions and experience. And that’s also pretty cool.
Veronica Wells is the culture editor at MadameNoire.com. She is also the author of “Bettah Days.” You can follow her on Facebook and on Instagram and Twitter @VDubShrug.
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