So, because you've suffered emotional pain, you feel enabled to exclude and deride others, thereby inflicting emotional pain on them? With a revenge streak like that, no wonder you got shot down.

An excellent point, and one I hadn't thought of. I remember my mom getting angry at me when I quit the Boy Scouts to play D&D with my friends (seriously), but the truth was I just fit in with the D&D kids more. I was never bullied in high school, but I was ignored and didn't realize how uncommon it was that I never…

You don't get to have a monopoly on insecurity, especially since it's impossible to measure. I've got piles of insecurities. So does everyone I've ever gotten close to. Based on that statistic I'm going to go out on a limb and assume everyone in the planet is insecure. In terms of my own looks, I could easily fit…

I only recently heard about skin whitening cream. It's.... creepy on a very fundamental level. That's really awful about your friend, no one should have to feel that sort of unwarranted shame from their own family.

I'm a longtime cyclist, myself, so my arms have always been just a touch darker than the rest of me. …

When we bring tanning culture into the mix, it gets even more complicated, haha. I don't think anyone should risk skin cancer to look more like someone else or more like someone else's conception of beauty, but I also wouldn't tell someone what they can and cannot do with their body.

Just to add to the complications…

My first girlfriend back in high school was biracial, and I remember what attracted me to her on the day we first met was that her skin was downright beautiful. Over the next few years we became best friends, then dated before moving off to college. We talked about race a lot, and it was a good learning experience…

Lego was NEVER affordable. I loved Legos as a kid, but my parents could only afford to buy me the medium-sized sets at Christmas. I never got any of the big sets.