At the elite Aburi Girls Boarding School, everyone knows Paulina Sarpong, the prettiest, most popular girl in school, is a lock to win Miss Ghana 1986.

That is until Ericka Boafo, a beautiful, biracial American girl with Ghanaian roots transfers into the school and signs up to audition for the pageant and wows the recruiter, threatening Paulina’s race to the crown and her dream of becoming the next Iman.

“Listen,” Paulina tells the fair-skinned Ericka at one point. “The world has already decided you are better than me.”

In School Girls; Or, The African Mean Girls Play, now showing at the Round House Theatre in Bethesda, African and Western beauty standards collide in dramatic fashion.

The winner of Miss Ghana books an automatic spot into the Miss Global Universe pageant, and with her light skin and commercial appeal—Ericka, not Paulina—is seen as someone who can realistically compete on the international stage.

“We are just looking for girls that fall on the other end of the African skin spectrum,” Eloise Amponsah, the pageant recruiter says in the play.

And because the pageant recruiter and Paulina’s friends are more interested in Ericka’s universal look, a jealous, insecure Paulina snaps, and all hell breaks loose. It’s all the pressures around her that turn her into the mean girl of the show’s title.

“(Paulina’s) a mean girl,” says Awa Sal Secka, who plays Ama, Paulina’s best friend. “I think to call her a bully puts a wash over her and takes away her humanity and takes away the reasons why she does the things that she does.”

The all-female play from noted Ghanaian-American playwright and performer Jocelyn Bioh enjoyed two sold-out Off-Broadway runs starting in 2017. Associate artistic director Nicole A. Watson helms the Bethesda production.

Calling herself a big fan of Bioh’s work, Watson says the playwright uses this play to highlight the pervasiveness of Western beauty standards in an African country.

“You see the reach of beauty standards and beauty images in a place where everybody in that school is trying to subscribe to a standard of beauty that they should not be … wanting to represent,” Watson says.

The play was inspired by the controversial 2011 Miss Universe Ghana Pageant in which Yayra Erica Nego, a fair-skinned, biracial American woman of Ghanaian heritage, caused an uproar after she won the title over native Ghanaians with darker skin. The play, a comedy, tackles serious topics like peer pressure, teenage friendship, and colorism.

Colorism refers to discrimination against darker-skinned people that grants economic, cultural, and social privileges to lighter-skinned people within the same racial or ethnic group.

For example, a study released in 2011 found that light-skinned black women receive shorter prison sentences than their darker-skinned counterparts. And in Northeast D.C. last week, a black bartender at Copycat Co. was fired several days after he called a dark-skinned black woman a “black, ugly bitch.” The firing only came several days after a deluge of negative publicity.

Because light skin is often seen as more beautiful and the key to achieving economic success and social status, many people of color, especially women, feel pressure to conform to those unrealistic standards.

The use of harmful skin-bleaching products is mentioned in the play several times. For example, on Ericka’s first day of school, one of the girls admires her skin tone and wants whatever bleaching cream Ericka used to get that way. When Ericka says her skin color is natural, another girl tells Ericka, “Wow. You really are blessed.” Skin-whitening soaps and creams that slow the production of melanin are used around the world, and often contain dangerous ingredients like mercury and high-dose steroids, which can lead to kidney failure, skin damage, and other ailments. The World Health Organization recently declared their use a public health crisis.

Colorism is often an emotional, painful topic and the play’s cast not only felt comfortable telling Watson about their experiences, but also tapping into those emotions to boost their performances.

One thing they discussed was the idea that even some famous darker-skinned women like Lupita Nyong’o still have Eurocentric features, like height, a slender figure, and a smaller nose and lips, Secka says.

“There’s still a standard of beauty that you’re asking for that doesn’t change just because of somebody’s skin color,” says Secka, born in New York City to a mother from Gambia and a father from Senegal. “What about the other characteristics of being black that are not just somebody’s skin? About full lips and high cheekbones and a large bosom or a butt or whatever that may be? Those are things that most women in Africa are known for.”

Both Watson and Secka pointed out that society often embraces these features on white women like Kim Kardashian when they get plastic surgery or lip injections.

“It’s ugly when it’s black, but when it’s white, it’s not,” Secka says.

There’s also a time for laughter in the play.

In one of the more lighthearted moments between the schoolgirls, they’re beside themselves when they realize Miss Ghana will accompany 80s R&B heartthrob Bobby Brown to an American awards show.

“Bobby Brown!!! Ahhh! I would die,” four of the girls exclaim in unison. Even Headmistress Francis chimes in with, “That song is my jam!”

Because the play uses laughter and joy while it addresses serious subjects, it’ll be easier for the audience to learn about colorism and its impact, Watson says. Secka says stories about colorism are important to tell because many people—even other black people she’s met—are either unaware of it or deny it exists.

“It’s the harsh truth of today and if we don’t put it on stage here and if we don’t talk about it, then people can assume that it’s over and done with and there’s nothing more to talk about,” Secka says. “It’s still happening to little girls in schools.”

School Girls; Or, The African Mean Girls Play’s extended run at Round House Theatre ends Oct. 20. Tickets $37-$73.

This story has been updated to correct the title for Nicole A. Watson.