A young girl who was bullied for years made haters her motivators and turned her negative experience into a prosperous business.
Kheris Rogers of Los Angels, California has sold “well over” 10,000 shirts and she’s only 11 years old. The young girl began the “Flexin’ in my complexion” t-shirt collection with the help of her sister Taylor Pollard. The two created the line to encourage other Black girls to embrace their skin.
Rogers was teased by other students for her chocolate melanin complexion. She told CBS News that bullies would say she’d been “in the oven too long” and called her things like “dead roach.” She also recalled a time when a teacher passed her a Black crayon and handed other Black students a brown one. Her mother moved her to a different school, but the harassment only became worst. Students physically assaulted Rogers and threatened her.
Pollard recalled the turning point in her little sister’s life.
“One day she was taking a bath and that’s when she expressed to me that she wanted to stay in the bathtub longer in hopes that her skin would get lighter,” Pollard said.
The big sister took matters into her own hands and shared a photo of Rogers on Twitter. She wrote, “My sister is only 10 but already royalty#FlexinInHerComplexion.”
Pollard woke-up the next day and saw that her little sister was trending on social media. “It was up to almost half a million likes and she had just as many retweets on Twitter,” she noted.
Several celebrities posted photos wearing Roger’s “Flexin” t-shirts such as actress Lupita Nyong’o and singer Alicia Keys.
Rogers told the news station, “Flexin’ in my complexion means to me that, it doesn’t matter what other people think about you, it’s what you think about yourself and you don’t let anybody tell you different.”
The 11-year-old has been awarded several opportunities and became the youngest fashion designer in New York’s Harlem fashion week. The greatest reward for the entrepreneur was changing ” how other people feel about themselves.”
Rogers silenced her former critics and turned a negative experience into a positive. When she stares at the person reflecting back at her in the mirror, she sees, “Black beauty. I see melanin popping. I see anything you can think of.”
