Kheris Rogers, 12 year old bullied girl making maves with her #FlexinInMyComplexion shirt
Written by olucapri on January 12, 2019
Taylor Pollard remembers when her younger sister, Kheris Rogers, was in the first grade, she once asked to stay in the bathtub longer — she hoped it would make her skin lighter.
“That’s when I realized that the bullying that was going on at her school at the first grade was really taking a toll on her,” Pollard, 23, tells CNBC Make It. Kids were making fun of Rogers’ dark complexion.
The students in Rogers’ class in Los Angeles were primarily white, recall the sisters. There were four other African-Americans, but Rogers’ skin was darker than everyone else’s. Rogers, now 11, remembers being asked to draw a picture of herself; the teacher gave her a black crayon while the other African-American students were given brown ones.
So Erika Pollard, the girls’ mom, moved Rogers to a more diverse school for the 2013 – 2014 school year.
At the school Rogers attended from second through fifth grade, kids still made fun of her, but this time the kids bullying her were black. Rogers came to learn that this called colorism.
So in the spring of 2017, Taylor Pollard tweeted a photo of Rogers with the hashtag, “#FlexinInHerComplexion,” an expression the sisters’ grandmother, Bettie Pollard, who grew up in Louisiana, used frequently to encourage the girls to feel beautiful.
“When that picture was published, I went viral,” Rogers tells CNBC Make It. (The original tweet was accidentally deleted, but Pollard had a screenshot, which she has since retweeted.)
“That’s when I realized that the bullying that was going on at her school at the first grade was really taking a toll on her,” Pollard, 23, tells CNBC Make It. Kids were making fun of Rogers’ dark complexion.
The students in Rogers’ class in Los Angeles were primarily white, recall the sisters. There were four other African-Americans, but Rogers’ skin was darker than everyone else’s. Rogers, now 11, remembers being asked to draw a picture of herself; the teacher gave her a black crayon while the other African-American students were given brown ones.
So Erika Pollard, the girls’ mom, moved Rogers to a more diverse school for the 2013 – 2014 school year.
At the school Rogers attended from second through fifth grade, kids still made fun of her, but this time the kids bullying her were black. Rogers came to learn that this called colorism.
So in the spring of 2017, Taylor Pollard tweeted a photo of Rogers with the hashtag, “#FlexinInHerComplexion,” an expression the sisters’ grandmother, Bettie Pollard, who grew up in Louisiana, used frequently to encourage the girls to feel beautiful.
“When that picture was published, I went viral,” Rogers tells CNBC Make It. (The original tweet was accidentally deleted, but Pollard had a screenshot, which she has since retweeted.)
In response to the post, the sisters received a flurry of messages supporting Rogers and decided they wanted to channel that energy. Together, they came up with the idea of putting the message on a t-shirt. Their business, Flexin’ In My Complexion, launched shortly thereafter in April 2017.
Erika gave the sisters about a $100 to get their project off the ground, Pollard says. They used some of the money to build a website.
Erika gave the sisters about a $100 to get their project off the ground, Pollard says. They used some of the money to build a website.
Kheris Rogers and Taylor Pollard, the co-CEOs of Flexin’ in my Complexion
“I actually have no experience in making websites, so I just Google-searched how to make a website,” Pollard tells CNBC Make It. “I just went through like a secondary website where you can kind of create it.”
They also paid Gabriel, a foster child Erika knew from her job as a social worker, to teach the sisters how to screen print t-shirts. The sisters set up shop in the garage behind their mom’s house in L.A.
T-shirts on FlexinInMyComplexion.com cost between $15 and $20. Other items for sale include bomber jackets for $54.99, satin pant and jacket sets for $45 and jumpsuits for $29.99. In addition to “Flexin’ In My Complexion,” the sisters also make clothes with sayings like “Coolest Queen in the Universe,” “Coolest King in the Universe” and “The Miseducation of Melanin. ”
Currently, several celebrities such as Alisha Keys, Lupita Nyongo, Snoop Dogg, Lenna Waith, are posting their pictures wearing the shirt.
As the buzz grew, Rogers became the youngest designer ever to participate in New York’s Harlem Fashion Week, walked the runway for VH1’s “America’s Next Top Model” and appeared on Steve Harvey’s syndicated show “Steve.”
source: cnbc
They also paid Gabriel, a foster child Erika knew from her job as a social worker, to teach the sisters how to screen print t-shirts. The sisters set up shop in the garage behind their mom’s house in L.A.
T-shirts on FlexinInMyComplexion.com cost between $15 and $20. Other items for sale include bomber jackets for $54.99, satin pant and jacket sets for $45 and jumpsuits for $29.99. In addition to “Flexin’ In My Complexion,” the sisters also make clothes with sayings like “Coolest Queen in the Universe,” “Coolest King in the Universe” and “The Miseducation of Melanin. ”
Currently, several celebrities such as Alisha Keys, Lupita Nyongo, Snoop Dogg, Lenna Waith, are posting their pictures wearing the shirt.
As the buzz grew, Rogers became the youngest designer ever to participate in New York’s Harlem Fashion Week, walked the runway for VH1’s “America’s Next Top Model” and appeared on Steve Harvey’s syndicated show “Steve.”
source: cnbc
