What Bleaching Cream and My Height Insecurities Have in Common | by Yetunde Ogunfolu | Quirky Rants | Sep, 2025

I have been there before.

No, not with bleaching creams, but with self-hate.

My own battle wasn’t with my skin, but with my height.

As a young girl, I hated the fact that I was tall.

In basic one, I was the tallest girl in my class. At first, I was too naive to care.

But as time passed by, the names started: “Tallest.” “Agali.”

Oh, how I loathed those words.

One day, a teacher told me I was “tall for nothing.”

Not because I wasn’t intelligent, but because I couldn’t do high jump or run during inter house sports.

I can still feel the sting of her words.

That day, I cried.

I felt useless.

Years passed by, but my insecurities clung to me.

Even when my classmates stopped teasing, I still battled with myself.

Whenever I walk with my shorter friends, I felt like an outcast.

People assumed I was older than I was, and that made me hate my height even more.

Isn’t it weird that some people are praying for height, while I was desperately hoping to become short?

You might think I was ungrateful, or perhaps funny to have been given a good height, and yet want to discard it.

But that’s how self-hate works.

It blinds you to the blessing in what you already have.

I even tried to “fix” myself.

I believed beans made me tall, so I stopped eating them.

My favorite meal, bread and beans, suddenly became my enemy.

I would measure myself against the wall daily, hoping I had gotten shorter.

I asked my younger sister to compare me with strangers on the street: “Between me and that lady, who’s taller?”

Every time she said it was me, my heart broke a little more.

But nothing worked.

Nothing ever worked.

So eventually, I gave up.

I accepted my height and went back to my bread and beans.

I didn’t care anymore.

That was until I became a teacher and met a student taller than me.

For the first time, I looked at her and thought, “Wow… so I’m not the tallest after all.”

She carried herself with confidence, and I thought: If she can accept herself, why can’t I?

Sometimes, you just have to deafen your ears to what people are saying.

It will save you the stress of trying to shrink yourself into their version of “enough.”

Because the truth is, no matter what you do, people will always have something to say.

If you listen too closely, you will lose yourself.

But if you silence the noise, you’ll find peace.

That marked my turning point.

Slowly, I began to love my height especially when people begin to compliment me saying I looked like a model or a celebrity.

My confidence grew, and I even started wearing heels proudly.

Today, I’m proud to stand tall.

And you know what I realized?

My experience helped me understand why some people bleach, or starve themselves to become slim, or hide who they are.

I understand we all want to be accepted.

But here’s the truth: changing yourself to please others will never heal the hurt inside.

You’re black? That doesn’t mean you’re not beautiful.

You’re tall? That doesn’t mean you’re useless.

You’re not “endowed”? That doesn’t mean no one will love you.

There are people who admire you exactly as you are. They might not have approached you to tell you this, but they actually do.

But if you change yourself for the world, you risk pushing those people away.

The problem isn’t you — it’s the voice telling you you’re not enough.