Will You Be Celebrating National Pretty Brown Girl Day This Weekend?

Not another Hallmark Holiday, but something meaningful

Can instilling self-esteem be as simple as declaring a day to love yourselves? To Michigan couple Sheri and Corey Crawley, they certainly believe it's a start.

They declared Saturday, February 25, to be National Pretty Brown Girl Day in the hopes of getting more black girls to embrace themselves for who they are. The Crawleys are the creators of the organization, Pretty Brown Girl, whose mission is to encourage girls to celebrate the beautiful shades of Brown all over the world while inspiring positive self esteem and confidence.

We sat down with Sheri to see what her organization hopes to accomplish with National Pretty Brown Girl Day and beyond.

[Also Read: "Good Deeds" Star Brian White: "I Don't Hate Black Women!"]

Loop21: What inspired you to create Pretty Brown Girl?

Corey Crawley: First, my daughter turned four and wanted to go to the American Girl store. We had brunch there and the girls got to pick their dolls off the wall, so they could eat with us. All of the girls chose white dolls. I'm standing there like, "What's wrong with the pretty brown dolls?" And it was surprising because they were surrounded by positive role models, they know their history. But when given a choice, they didn't pick the dolls that looked like them.

Then we moved to a suburb of Detroit and my daughter was the only African-American girl in her school. I could immediately tell her personality was changing. She felt alienated. Then the comments started. My daughter would ask, "Mommy, can you buy me that shampoo so my hair can look like hers [the white classmate]?"

It was so surprising because my husband always calls our children "pretty brown girls." They know they're loved just the way they are.

So it got me thinking. We've been running businesses for a while now and I began to ask God to give us a way to use our talents to inspire others. And one day it just popped up. I went online to see if the domain www.prettybrowngirl.com was available. And it was. I had to buy it. We're putting out a very deliberate message that brown is beautiful.