The first time Nyakim Gatwech heard that her skin was “too black,” she was still a child clutching a teddy bear in a Minnesota classroom where snow reflected more light than her classmates had ever seen on a human face. Years later, an Uber driver would suggest, half-helpfully, that a little bleaching cream might “open doors.” She answered without raising her voice: “I’d rather take the hard road.” That hard road has since become a catwalk, a megaphone, and a mirror held up to an industry that once air-brushed women who looked like her into ghostly silhouettes.
Born in Ethiopia to South Sudanese parents and raised amid refugee camps before landing in the United States, Nyakim learned early that beauty could be a weapon wielded against you. School hallways echoed with nicknames meant to shrink her, yet each insult only polished the armor of self-belief she was quietly forging. She began posting raw, filter-free portraits on Instagram—her skin drinking sunlight, her smile unapologetic—until hashtags turned into modeling calls and agencies that once swiped left were suddenly asking for meetings.
Runway lights can be cruel, but Nyakim bent them to her will. She stepped onto international stages in jewel-toned gowns that framed her complexion like midnight framing stars, and photographers discovered that no amount of retouching could improve on the richness already there. Magazines began calling her “the Queen of the Dark,” a title she wears like a robe of state, reminding every dark-skinned girl scrolling at 2 a.m. that royalty isn’t conferred by magazines—it’s recognized.
Her influence now reaches far beyond fashion spreads. She speaks at high schools where shy teens lower their eyes, and she lifts chins with the simple truth that melanin is not a flaw to be corrected but a landscape to be celebrated. Designers who once carried three shades of foundation now carry ten because her presence on set proved the market was always there, just ignored. She tells young Black women that self-love is not a hashtag but a daily practice: look in the mirror, speak your own name with reverence, and refuse to shrink so someone else can feel bigger.
Nyakim’s story is still being written—one photograph, one runway, one honest caption at a time—but the moral is already clear: when you choose to love what the world calls unlovable, you don’t just change your own reflection; you change the glass through which everyone else must look.
