Being a Proud Moreno Man: How I Learned to Love My Brown Skin and Build Real Confidence

By Jeremy Melodious

How do you become confident as a brown man?

For me, it did not happen because I woke up one morning, looked in the mirror, and suddenly decided I loved everything about myself.

I wish confidence worked like that.

It would have saved me a lot of time.

My confidence came from dancing before I ever had formal dance training. It came from working out and learning what my body could do. It came from education, curiosity, failure, discipline, self-compassion, and eventually understanding that some of the things I once questioned about myself were never problems in the first place.

And a huge part of that journey has been learning to love my brown skin.

I am a Vietnamese American man with a naturally warm brown complexion. I connect personally with the broader conversation around Moreno Men, Brown Asian men, brown male beauty, colorism, and brown skin confidence.

I have already written about what a Moreno guy means, explored Moreno Men and brown male beauty, and shared my deeper experience with colorism in Vietnamese culture.

This article is about what comes next.

How do you actually become confident inside the brown body you were born with?

For me, confidence has become much less about getting everyone else to approve of me.

It is about knowing my worth before the room decides what it thinks about me.

What Confidence Means to Me as a Moreno Man

I used to think confidence meant walking into a room and never feeling nervous.

Now I think that definition is way too simple.

You can be confident and still get nervous.

You can be confident and still experience rejection.

You can be confident and still have an insecure day.

You can love yourself and still notice when somebody treats you differently.

Real confidence is not becoming emotionally bulletproof.

Confidence is knowing who you are even when something does affect you.

That distinction took me years to understand.

For me, confidence now comes from several places: loving myself, loving my brown skin, moving my body, taking care of my health, developing real skills, continuing to learn, understanding the systems around me, and refusing to automatically treat somebody else's assumptions as facts about who I am.

People will sometimes misunderstand you.

They may underestimate you.

Some people may stereotype you before you even speak.

You cannot control every story another person's brain creates when they look at you.

But you can decide whether that story becomes the story you tell yourself.

That is where confidence starts becoming freedom.

I Loved Dancing Before My Family Could Afford Dance Classes

Dance was one of the first places where I remember feeling completely like myself.

I loved dancing growing up.

My family just did not have the extra money to put me into regular dance classes.

That is an important part of my story because I did not start dancing with the perfect studio, expensive private lessons, dance conventions, or professional choreography training.

I started because music came on and something inside me wanted to move.

That was it.

I watched.

I copied.

I experimented.

I repeated things.

I messed up.

I tried again.

Little by little, I got better.

Eventually, dance became much more serious for me. I danced competitively in high school, continued dancing through college, choreographed performances, and carried movement into the creative work I still make today.

I tell more of that story in How Dance & Fashion Shaped My Life, My Energy, and Who I Am Today.

But when I think specifically about confidence, dance gave me something motivational quotes never could.

Dance made me practice believing in myself.

There is a difference between somebody telling you to believe in yourself and repeatedly putting yourself into situations where you have to.

Dance did that for me.

Dance Taught Me How to Take Up Space

When you dance, hiding is difficult.

Your body is visible. Your choices are visible. If you make a mistake, that can be visible too.

Eventually, you have to commit.

Extend the arm.

Finish the movement.

Look forward.

Hit the beat.

Keep going.

If you mess up, do not spend the next eight counts emotionally writing your obituary. Catch the choreography and move on.

That lesson became much bigger than dance.

When you grow up feeling different in some way—because of your skin, body, personality, identity, or whatever else makes you feel like you stand out—it can become easy to make yourself smaller.

Dance taught me the opposite.

Take up space.

Not because you are more important than everybody else.

Because you belong in the room too.

I have messed up choreography.

I have looked awkward.

I have forgotten movements.

I have created content that flopped.

I have questioned myself.

And none of those moments ended my story.

I am still dancing.

Still creating.

Still learning.

Still becoming more myself.

That is confidence to me.

Not perfection.

Recovery.

Working Out Gave Me Another Kind of Confidence

Dance introduced me to body confidence.

Working out strengthened it.

As I got older, I began taking weight training more seriously. Fitness became another way of building a relationship with my body instead of constantly evaluating it from the outside.

Yes, I like looking fit.

I like feeling strong.

I like having definition.

I like putting on fitted clothing and thinking, Okayyy, this outfit is working.

I am not going to pretend appearance has absolutely nothing to do with why I exercise.

It does.

But appearance is not the deepest reason I keep going.

I keep working out because keeping promises to yourself builds confidence.

There are mornings when I do not feel like exercising.

I still get up.

Sometimes I lift. Sometimes I walk. Sometimes I dance, stretch, or do something lighter.

Then I repeat the process the next day.

That repetition changes more than your body.

It changes the way you see yourself.

Every time you say, I am going to do this, and then actually do it, you create another small piece of evidence that you can trust yourself.

I write about my fitness habits more specifically in How I Stay Lean and Healthy, but the psychological lesson extends far beyond exercise.

Discipline creates evidence. Evidence creates self-trust. Self-trust creates confidence.

That principle works in a gym, a classroom, a career, a dance rehearsal, or almost anything else you care about.

Loving Yourself Is the Foundation

Underneath the dancing, the workouts, the education, and everything else is something simpler.

You eventually have to learn how to like the person you are spending your entire life with.

You.

That does not mean pretending you are flawless.

I'm definitely not.

Self-love is not standing in front of a mirror every morning declaring yourself the greatest human being who has ever lived.

That sounds exhausting.

For me, self-love is being able to examine myself honestly without using self-hatred as my primary form of motivation.

For years, I thought being harder on myself would automatically make me stronger.

Push harder.

Find the flaw.

Fix the flaw.

Do better.

Repeat.

Ambitious people can become very good at this.

There is absolutely value in self-evaluation. But criticism stops being useful when every conversation you have with yourself begins with the assumption that something about you is inadequate.

That is not confidence.

That is surveillance.

And when you have already grown up around racialized beauty standards, adding another internal judge to the room becomes exhausting.

I do not want to spend my life policing my own reflection.

I want to live in it.

What Serena Chen's Psychology Helped Me Understand About the Self

One reason studying at UC Berkeley changed me is that Berkeley gave me language for experiences I previously understood only emotionally.

Professor Serena Chen's work in social psychology explores areas including self and identity, self-compassion, relationships, social hierarchy, power, and inequality.

Those subjects resonated with me because identity does not develop inside a vacuum.

We understand ourselves partly through our relationships and environments.

Family.

Friends.

Teachers.

Media.

Culture.

Acceptance.

Rejection.

Status.

Belonging.

When a child repeatedly receives the message that one type of appearance is more beautiful, trustworthy, refined, successful, or desirable than another, those messages do not necessarily remain external forever.

Eventually, you can start evaluating yourself through them.

That is why self-love is not superficial to me.

Sometimes loving yourself requires asking a surprisingly difficult question:

Which beliefs about myself were actually mine in the first place?

Was I born believing lighter skin was better?

No.

Was I born wondering whether I looked "too dark" in a photograph?

Of course not.

Those ideas had to come from somewhere.

And once I understood that beliefs could be learned, I also understood that they could be questioned.

That realization is part of what I explore more deeply in UC Berkeley Made Me Proud to Be Brown.

You do not have to accept every belief your environment hands you.

To me, that is one of the most liberating things education can teach.

Education Gave Me a Different Kind of Confidence

Dance made me trust my body.

Fitness made me trust my discipline.

Education helped me trust my mind.

I genuinely believe learning is one of the most underrated ways to build confidence.

Not because having a degree makes somebody more valuable.

It doesn't.

And definitely not because educated people know everything.

The more I learn, the more aware I become of how much I still do not know.

But instead of making me insecure, that has made me more curious.

I love learning something new.

Psychology.

Media.

History.

SEO.

Technology.

Culture.

Marketing.

Music.

Human behavior.

Sometimes I have one random question at 11 p.m. and suddenly I am twelve tabs deep reading about something I had no intention of studying that night.

That is very me.

Every new thing you genuinely understand gives you another lens through which to interpret the world.

And knowledge creates a form of confidence that appearance cannot give you.

Someone might be more handsome than you.

Okay.

Someone may have more money.

Okay.

Someone may have more followers.

Cool.

None of that takes away what you have genuinely learned.

Knowledge becomes part of how you think.

Your Mind Is Not Literally a Muscle, but Train It Like One

I still like the phrase the mind is a muscle because the metaphor makes intuitive sense.

Technically, your brain is an organ.

But the mentality behind the phrase is useful:

Use your mind. Challenge it. Keep teaching it new things.

Psychology has a useful concept called self-efficacy—essentially, your belief in your ability to successfully perform a particular task or deal with a challenge.

One major way that belief develops is through mastery experiences.

In normal-person language: you attempt something difficult, work through it, and collect evidence that you are capable.

The first presentation can be terrifying.

By the twentieth, you understand the feeling.

The first dance performance can make your heart feel like it is trying to escape your chest.

Eventually, you know how stage nerves work.

The first time you open a complicated analytics dashboard, everything may look like numbers fighting each other.

Then one day you are explaining the dashboard to someone else.

Competence changes your posture.

Not because you suddenly know everything.

Because you have evidence that you can learn what you do not know yet.

That might be one of the strongest kinds of confidence there is.

I do not need to know everything. I need to trust that I am capable of learning.

Walking Home From UC Berkeley Made Me Think About How Brown Men Are Perceived

There is another side of confidence that inspirational content sometimes skips.

You can love yourself completely and still live in a world where somebody may interpret your body through stereotypes.

I remember walking home at night from the UC Berkeley campus.

Sometimes I would notice someone ahead of me looking back.

Then looking again.

Maybe walking a little differently.

Maybe becoming more alert.

I cannot tell you exactly what every stranger was thinking.

That would be dishonest.

People are naturally cautious at night. I understand that because I was cautious too.

But as a brown man, I became aware of the possibility that somebody could be reading my appearance through assumptions I had nothing to do with.

And the almost funny part was:

I was scared walking home too.

It was nighttime.

I was a college student trying to get home safely.

The person looking back at me might have been wondering whether I was dangerous.

Meanwhile I was thinking:

Girl, I'm trying not to get kidnapped too.

That memory has always stayed with me because it captures something complicated about living inside a brown male body.

Someone can see masculinity.

Brown skin.

Dark hair.

A silhouette.

A stranger.

And construct an entire story before knowing anything about the human being inside it.

But I was not a threat.

I was Jeremy.

Probably thinking about class.

Or dancing.

Or food.

Or whatever assignment I had procrastinated on that week.

There can be a huge gap between who you are and who someone imagines you to be.

Learning not to automatically internalize that gap became part of my confidence.

Being Brown Can Change How People Read You

This is where I think confidence needs to become intelligent rather than delusional.

I do not believe in pretending discrimination does not exist.

Racism did not disappear because representation improved.

Colorism did not disappear because brown skin started looking good on somebody's TikTok mood board.

And not every uncomfortable racial experience can be solved by telling someone to just love yourself more.

Sometimes the problem is not your confidence.

Sometimes someone really is treating you differently.

Those are different problems.

Understanding that distinction helped me tremendously.

When you encounter stereotyping repeatedly, it can become easy to ask:

What is wrong with me?

Education taught me to ask something different:

What assumptions might be operating here?

That does not make discrimination painless.

But it prevents every difficult interaction from automatically becoming evidence against yourself.

What Michael Dumas Taught Me to Ask About Anti-Blackness

Another intellectual framework that changed the way I think about race came from Michael J. Dumas's scholarship on anti-Blackness.

His work pushed me to think beyond the simple idea that racism exists only when one individual consciously dislikes another individual.

Racial hierarchy can become embedded in institutions, language, policy, representation, beauty standards, assumptions, and the categories through which people interpret one another.

That matters when discussing colorism.

My experience as a brown Vietnamese American man is not the same as a Black man's experience in a society shaped by anti-Black racism.

I want to be very clear about that.

Different communities have different histories, relationships to power, and experiences of discrimination.

But if darker Asian children are insulted by being compared negatively to Black people, or darkness becomes culturally associated with criminality, poverty, danger, dirtiness, or inferiority, then another question has to be asked:

Why was Blackness available as the insult in the first place?

That moves the conversation beyond individual confidence.

Colorism is real.

Anti-Blackness is real.

Anti-Asian racism is real.

Racism is real.

And Asian communities can experience racism while also reproducing harmful attitudes toward Black people.

Those truths do not cancel each other out.

Being proud of my brown skin therefore cannot mean only saying:

Look at me. Brown is beautiful.

It also means challenging the hierarchy that taught people darker was worse.

Because if I only want the hierarchy to move me upward while leaving somebody else underneath it, I have not actually challenged the hierarchy.

I have just asked for a better seat.

That is not liberation.

I Refuse to Let Somebody Else's Prejudice Become My Mirror

This is why loving my skin has become such an important part of confidence for me.

I do not love being brown because I believe brown is superior.

I do not need somebody lighter to become less attractive for me to feel attractive.

I love my skin because it is mine.

My complexion carries my Vietnamese identity.

My family.

My childhood.

California sunlight.

Every dance performance.

Every photograph.

Every awkward phase.

Every confident phase.

Every version of Jeremy that had to exist for me to become the person writing this.

Why would I want to erase that?

I spent enough time wondering whether another version of me would be easier for the world to understand.

Now I am interested in a much better question:

How fully can I become myself?

That is the mindset I want to carry forward.

I cannot stop every person from having prejudice.

But I refuse to let somebody else's prejudice become my mirror.

Brown Is Beautiful Without Making Beauty Another Competition

I want Moreno Men and Brown Asian men to feel beautiful.

I want Black men to feel beautiful.

I want lighter Asian men to feel beautiful.

I want golden, olive, caramel, tan, deep brown, and pale complexions to all exist without somebody turning the human face into a ranking system.

Because I have no interest in replacing:

lighter is better

with:

darker is better.

That would recreate the same problem with different winners.

The goal is not to reverse colorism.

The goal is to outgrow it.

Beauty never needed a racial leaderboard.

And spreading love for Moreno Men should never require taking beauty away from somebody else.

There is enough beauty to go around.

Be a Model of Excellence, Not a "Model Minority"

As a Vietnamese American, I also think it is important to talk about the model minority stereotype.

I believe deeply in education.

Discipline.

Achievement.

Hard work.

Responsibility.

Treating people well.

Building something meaningful with your life.

Never giving up on yourself.

But Asian Americans should not have to prove our value by becoming society's idea of the perfect "model minority."

That stereotype can flatten an incredibly diverse population into a single image: universally successful, obedient, academically exceptional, economically comfortable, quiet, and supposedly unaffected by racism.

Real life is more complicated.

And when Asian American success gets used to suggest that racism does not matter—or as a weapon against Black communities—the stereotype becomes especially harmful.

My mentality is different.

Do not become a model minority. Become a model of excellence.

There is a difference.

Learn because knowledge expands you.

Work hard because your dreams deserve effort.

Develop discipline because you want to trust yourself.

Treat people well because character matters.

Build something meaningful because your life deserves direction.

But never use your success as evidence that somebody else's struggle must be imaginary.

Your achievement should expand your empathy, not shrink it.

That is the kind of success I want.

Never Give Up, but Understand What You Are Fighting

I believe strongly in persistence.

I want to keep learning, improving, creating, training, dancing, and building the life I imagine for myself.

But never give up should not mean pretending the world is always fair.

Sometimes you need to improve.

Sometimes the environment is unfair.

Sometimes you were unprepared.

Sometimes bias exists.

Sometimes you simply got unlucky.

And sometimes several of those things are true at once.

Confidence means being able to examine the situation without immediately collapsing into either extreme.

Not every setback is discrimination.

But discrimination does not become imaginary just because we would prefer not to think about it.

A healthier question is:

What happened here, what can I learn from it, and what can I control next?

That mindset keeps me moving without requiring me to lie to myself.

The Most Confident Version of Me Is Still Learning

When I was younger, I thought confidence meant eventually reaching some final version of myself where I had everything figured out.

Plot twist:

That version apparently forgot to show up.

And I am glad.

I want to keep learning.

I want to be 40 and discover something that completely changes my perspective.

I want to be 60 and still ask questions.

I want to be 80 and still find random subjects interesting enough to send me twelve tabs deep.

Curiosity keeps your identity flexible.

You stop thinking:

I need to prove that I already know.

And become comfortable saying:

Teach me.

That sentence requires confidence.

Listening, asking questions, changing your mind when evidence changes, admitting you do not know something, and sometimes starting over are all forms of confidence too.

Growth does not make you less certain of yourself.

Sometimes growth is the clearest evidence that you trust yourself enough to evolve.

How to Build Confidence as a Moreno Man

If you are a Moreno man, Brown Asian man, brown guy, or simply somebody trying to feel more at home in your own skin, these are the lessons that have helped me most.

1. Move Your Body

Find movement that makes you feel alive.

Dance gave me expression. Weight training gave me strength. Walking gives me space to think.

Your version could be swimming, running, basketball, martial arts, yoga, hiking, or something completely different.

The point is not to look like anybody else.

It is to experience what your body can do, not only what it looks like.

2. Build Real Competence

Affirmations can feel good.

Skills create evidence.

Learn something difficult enough that you surprise yourself.

Confidence becomes much more stable when it is connected to experiences that prove you are capable.

3. Keep Promises to Yourself

Self-trust matters.

If you constantly tell yourself you will do something and never follow through, eventually you stop believing yourself.

Start smaller if necessary.

Consistency is more useful than dramatic promises.

4. Question Beauty Standards You Inherited

Ask yourself where your ideas about attractiveness actually came from.

Family?

Advertising?

Movies?

Social media?

Dating apps?

Your community?

Understanding the origin of a belief does not automatically erase it, but it makes the belief much easier to examine critically.

5. Stop Turning Other People's Beauty Into Evidence Against Yours

Someone else being handsome does not mathematically reduce your attractiveness.

Beauty is not a pie.

Nobody took the last slice.

6. Learn About Racism and Colorism Without Letting Them Become Your Entire Identity

Understanding discrimination can protect you from internalizing it.

But you deserve an identity larger than the prejudice you have experienced.

You are also your humor.

Your interests.

Your friendships.

Your intelligence.

Your weird little obsessions.

Your art.

Your dreams.

Your entire humanity.

7. Practice Self-Compassion

Growth does not require hating the current version of yourself.

You can want more for yourself while still respecting the person you are today.

Those ideas are not opposites.

8. Find Something You Love Before Anyone Applauds

Dance gave me that.

Yours might be art, gaming, fashion, music, cooking, coding, writing, photography, business, sports, or something nobody around you understands yet.

Do it because something inside you comes alive.

9. Stay Curious

The person who knows how to learn does not need to pretend to know everything.

Curiosity is confidence without ego.

10. Own Your Skin

Not because your skin makes you better than anybody else.

Because it is yours.

And you deserve to feel at home in it.

Why Dance Will Always Be Part of My Confidence

Out of everything I have done, dance still represents something incredibly pure to me.

I loved dancing before I understood branding.

Before social media.

Before analytics.

Before followers.

Before creator careers.

Before I knew videos could reach millions of people.

Before my family had the money to put me into dance classes.

I danced because it made me happy.

That little kid who wanted to move eventually became someone who performed, choreographed, created dance content, and reached people far beyond the places where I first learned to dance.

Some of those stories eventually became part of my Viral Video Trends, including the story of how one of my dance videos reached millions of views.

But the views did not make dance valuable.

Dance was valuable before anybody watched.

That might be one of the most important lessons confidence has ever taught me:

Learn to love something before the world applauds you for it.

I Am Proud to Be a Brown Moreno Man

Today I can say this without hesitation.

I love being brown.

I love looking Vietnamese.

I love my darker features.

I love the warmth in my complexion.

I love the person I have become inside this body.

And I can say all of that while acknowledging that the world is not perfectly fair.

Colorism exists.

Racism exists.

Anti-Blackness exists.

Discrimination exists.

People sometimes make assumptions based on appearance.

Confidence does not require denying those realities.

It means understanding them without handing them complete ownership over the way you see yourself.

That is the difference.

I am aware of the world.

But I also know myself.

To Every Brown Guy Who Needs to Hear This

Maybe you found this article searching for Moreno Men, Moreno man, Moreno guys, brown skin confidence, brown male beauty, Brown Asian men, how to be confident as a brown man, or how to love brown skin.

Maybe you wanted a definition.

Maybe you needed something else.

So here is what I would tell you.

You do not need to become lighter to become handsome.

You do not need to become emotionally harder to become masculine.

You do not need to make yourself quieter so somebody else feels comfortable.

You do not need a perfect body before you deserve confidence.

You do not need to know everything before your ideas matter.

You do not need social media to declare your complexion attractive.

And you definitely do not need somebody else to become less beautiful before you recognize your own beauty.

Move your body.

Learn things.

Ask questions.

Read.

Create.

Take care of yourself.

Challenge beliefs that no longer make sense.

Keep your mind open.

Keep becoming somebody you are proud to live with.

Because confidence is not waking up every morning believing you are better than everyone else.

It is waking up and realizing you no longer need to be.

Brown is beautiful.

Moreno Men are beautiful.

And I am proud to be one of the brown men adding my face, my story, my Vietnamese identity, and my perspective to that picture.

— Jeremy Melodious

Frequently Asked Questions About Moreno Men and Confidence

How can a Moreno man become more confident?

Confidence can grow through self-acceptance, movement, education, skill development, discipline, meaningful relationships, self-compassion, and repeated experiences that build self-trust. For me personally, dance, fitness, education, and learning to love my brown skin were major parts of that process.

How do you become confident with brown skin?

Start by separating your natural complexion from beauty standards you may have inherited. Ask where negative beliefs about darker skin came from, seek representation that broadens your idea of beauty, and remember that your skin does not need to become lighter, darker, trendier, or more socially approved before it deserves appreciation.

Can dancing make you more confident?

Dance helped me develop confidence because it required expression, body awareness, persistence, vulnerability, and the willingness to take up space. It taught me that making a mistake does not mean the performance is over—you adjust and keep moving.

Can working out improve confidence?

For me, yes. Exercise helps me feel stronger, more focused, capable, and connected to my body. The biggest confidence lesson has not been appearance alone. It has been learning to keep promises to myself consistently.

Does learning make you more confident?

Learning can build confidence because developing competence gives you evidence that you can handle challenges. Psychology describes this partly through self-efficacy: beliefs about our ability to perform tasks can strengthen through successful experience and mastery.

What is a Moreno man?

Moreno is a Spanish descriptor whose meaning varies by culture and location. Depending on context, it may refer to dark hair, darker coloring, a tan complexion, brown skin, or a darker overall appearance. Moreno is not one universal race or ethnicity. For a deeper explanation, read What Is a Moreno Guy? Why I'm Proud to Be a Brown Moreno Man.

Can Asian men be brown or identify with Moreno Men?

Asian populations contain a wide range of natural complexions. Some Asian men describe themselves as tan, golden, olive, caramel, brown, or darker-skinned. Some may personally connect with the broader physical description associated with moreno, although the Spanish term should never automatically be imposed on somebody who does not use it for themselves.

Is being proud of brown skin colorism against lighter people?

No. Brown pride does not require treating lighter complexions as inferior. Healthy brown-skin confidence challenges the idea that human beauty needs to be ranked according to complexion at all.

What does being a proud Moreno man mean to Jeremy Melodious?

For me, being a proud Moreno man means loving my naturally brown Vietnamese skin, questioning colorism, understanding discrimination without internalizing it, continuing to educate myself, caring for my body and mind, and refusing to allow other people's assumptions to determine my self-worth.

Continue Reading About Moreno Men, Brown Skin and Confidence

Start with Moreno Men: Brown Asian Men and Brown Male Beauty for my foundational discussion of Moreno Men, Brown Asian identity, representation, colorism, masculinity, and brown male beauty.

Read What Is a Moreno Guy? Why I'm Proud to Be a Brown Moreno Man for a deeper explanation of the term and why it resonates with me personally.

Continue with My Brown Skin Was Never the Problem: Colorism in Vietnamese Culture for my most direct discussion of Vietnamese colorism and darker skin.

Read UC Berkeley Made Me Proud to Be Brown for more about how education changed the way I understood identity, race, representation, and myself.

Explore How Dance & Fashion Shaped My Life, My Energy, and Who I Am Today for the deeper story of how movement became part of my identity and confidence.

Read How I Stay Lean and Healthy for my personal approach to fitness, movement, strength, and taking care of my body.

You can also explore more writing about identity, culture, psychology, self-expression, Gen Z, and modern life through Jeremy's Perspectives, or browse the complete Jeremy Melodious Blog.