A 45-year-old man has shared the emotional reaction he had to putting on a bandage that matched his skin tone for the first time.
On Friday, Dominique Apollon, from Oakland, California, shared two photos of his hand, in which he is wearing a dark brown bandage on his pinky finger.
According to Apollon, the vice president of a non-profit fighting for racial justice, he had never before used a band-aid that was made for darker skin tones - but it was enough to bring him to tears.
“It’s taken me 45 trips around the sun, but for the first time in my life I know what it feels like to have a ‘band-aid’ in my own skin tone,” Apollon wrote. “You can barely even spot it in the first image.
“For real I’m holding back tears.”
Apollon then expanded on the moment, explaining to his followers that he knew products like this existed, but hadn’t realised the impact they could have.
“I definitely didn’t expect the complex emotions that would swirl as I watched it just...blend in,” he wrote.
According to Apollon, putting on a band-aid that matched his skin tone felt like “belonging,” and like feeling “valued” - feelings he wished he’d been able to experience as a child.
The 45-year-old concluded the Twitter thread admitting that he’d bought the Tru-Colour bandages as an “afterthought” a few months earlier - but that he truly appreciated how they made him feel.
Apollon’s tweet, which has been liked more than 518,000 times, has resonated with thousands of people.
In response, some people have shared their own experiences with “flesh-coloured” products, including crayons.
“This was one of the first things that made me aware of ‘race’ when I was a kid. I remember asking my mum about the band-aid colour… also the ‘flesh’ crayon,” one woman wrote, while actor John Boyega said each time he is injured on set, makeup artists have to paint his band-aids “brown”.
Following the viral reaction, Apollon wrote: “I’m glad this thread has sparked some love, introspection, empathy, and conscious actions in others,” before reminding his followers that defeating white supremacy will require effort from “all levels of our societies”.
