Although Jess’s first challenge in Australia was the lack of people who looked like her on Australian screens, she later discovered a lack of confidence to be her other challenge. She was adoring, worshipping, fearing and feeling threatened by White people. She saw them as superior to her, and that wasn’t just because of what they have in their brains; Jess was threatened by their beauty. “I meet White people and I no longer see myself as beautiful”. Jess trapped herself in a wig just so she felt like she could belong, or come as close as she can possibly could to belonging.

“I wore an Afro wig for a very long time to get attention, and that got me through surviving the loneliness of my time at university. That drew a few friends, so I thought that it worked. They assumed that the wig was my natural hair, and I went with it to conceal my shame and what I saw as my ugliness. But how long was I going to remain trapped in wigs and lies?”

When Jess finally broke free, she saw a shift in herself. She went from a woman who couldn’t confidently speak to a White person to speaking with a group of them, pitching her ideas and captivating them with her passion, doing it all with her bald head, with no makeup on, with her accent and her Black skin and she was not sorry for any of it. “Now know WHO I AM: a powerful Black woman embracing myself for WHO I AM”. At the bottom of this, Jess found the need to rediscover Black beauty, “the goddess in us that we have left buried under the shadow of White wings in a bid to belong.”