Meet Nyakim Gatwech, the South Sudanese model taking the world by storm thanks to her flawless midnight complexion, penetrating gaze and unwavering message of empowerment.
The 24-year-old is as determined as she is breathtaking — living in Minnesota, Gatwech is on a mission to promote skin positivity and self-acceptance amongst women with darker hues. Along with her stunning photos, which she shares with nearly 100,000 followers on Instagram, she also sends out inspirational messages targeting women who are struggling to be comfortable in their own skin.
Accompanying one of her most popular photos on Instagram, Gatwech shared a Marcus Garvey quote that embodies her own views: “The black skin is not a badge of shame but rather a glorious symbol of national greatness.”
See gallery for more photos of the Nubian beauty and let us know what you think by tweeting @YahooStyleCA!
Seriously guys the most fatalities of the summer occur the week(end) of July 4. If you drink please don’t drive. And if you do drive, be safe on the roads!
i went ahead and pulled some updated codes for july 2018 since idk if the code above is still valid anymore!
[source, along with expiration dates for the codes; the earliest one expires 7/5/2018, the latest expires 12/6/2018, and you can enter these ones on the lyft app up to 14 days before, so do it now if you plan on drinking so you don’t have to worry about it later!]
also, if you’re planning on taking public transit to get to/from your destination, check ahead of time to make sure that the route you need is going to be available on july 4th!!!! some trains and bus routes may not be operating or may have a different operating schedule (my local public transit will have a completely different schedule than they usually do on wednesdays) so please make sure you have a way home this july 4th that doesn’t involve drinking and driving!!
being a lesbian (and bi, pan, etc.) woman can be so hard and lonely because women specifically in our current culture are socialized to be very physically intimate with each other.
growing up my girl friends and i would shower together and cuddle and hold hands and do each other’s makeup and link arms when we walked down the street and share food.
and some women are on different levels of comfort and intimacy with each other, like maybe no shower-sharing or hand-holding etc. But on one level or another, we are raised to be physically affectionate and it’s normal.
and once we realize we’re not straight, suddenly people around us are scrutinizing us. anything we do with out friends must be because we’re attracted to them. so we start becoming afraid to interact platonically with women at all.
even if our friends reassure us they trust us and don’t feel that way, we hear other people saying shit like “what? you shower with her at the gym? you let her sleepover in your bed???”
“that’s like doing that with a guy, isn’t it?”
and we know that every single second of our time spent with straight women is spent being studied through a microscope by other heteros who see as as predators. It’s heartbreaking.
And if we don’t have great friends, because hey, when you’re younger sometimes your friends aren’t always great, we end up with no reassurance and we start worrying maybe we ARE crossing boundaries when we tell a best friend “you look hot in that dress” when we just meant it as a normal compliment, so we isolate ourselves from female friendships.
it’s sort of like a joke I hear a lot, “why do so many gay/bi/etc. girls have all guy friends?”
but the truth is actually really sad bc we’re afraid to interact with women because of the scrutiny we face in our every word, expression, and gesture.
if you’re straight and your girl friend isn’t, here’s something to know: it is impossible for me to exaggerate how much it means to me when my straight friends normalize physical intimacy with me in front of judgmental people.
When my straight friends hold my hand in the mall or link arms with me, or when they help me fix my hair or ask me to fix theirs, when they ask me to help them put on a necklace or unzip a dress, etc.
I know these all seem like little gestures but there are so many things I miss about “straight friendships” because I didn’t realize I liked women until I was 19, and some of my friends started acting different around me, stopped touching me, didn’t want to share beds, etc. and now I’m hyper-aware of my interactions with straight women to the point of misery.
So when you bridge that gap in the little ways, saying you don’t care and you trust me and love me and don’t see my any differently, it means the world tbh.
so many comments on this post are really patronizing like “clearly you’re nt form the US” and “okay but what girls showed together lmao bye” or “so you’re saying people have to let you touch them to be an ally” (??????????) and it’s like???
I clearly stated all people have different levels of comfort when it comes to intimacy.
No, I do’t go to my friends’ houses and strip with them to shower (but maybe someone does!). As adults my friends and I shower together after we swim at a public pool or a lake bc often locker rooms have communal shower options and it saves time.
Some of my friends don’t like hugging or holding hands, and I respect that, obviously.
Everyone has different lived experiences and comfort zones but I’m really tired of comments on this post making fun of me for having grown up comfortably intimate with my friends and being told that’s not normal for straight women.
vriska’s entire character arc is just. its the trolley problem only instead of picking a way to flip the switch she tries to derail the cart because she thinks she can outsmart it and it flips off of the rails and kills everyone on both paths and also her and shes like. take that trolley problem. i win because i didnt CONFORM to your stupid RULES . bitch.
tumblr archive 
