OP, I am very sorry that you've been made to feel you're less than beautiful because of your skin color. That should never be. While I can't entirely relate, because I am light-skinned even for a part Caucasian, part Native American person, I can identify with some of the struggle. I will never be supermodel-thin, no matter how much I eat right and exercise. I simply have a thicker, stockier body type, and I've always been made to feel ugly because of it. And yes, my mother helped plant that feeling of inferiority in my head. Sometimes our biggest emotional scars can come from our own mothers.