When I was a little girl, my dad told me about the very first time he saw me. I was barely visible and his heart sank because I looked dark. He was upset because despite both my parents being fair, I was apparently not. When he saw me next, I was clean and wiped down and my skin shone red and white,\ and he smiled in relief because I was fair after all- so fair at the time, that I had first seemed dark because of the red flush that showed through my fair skin.
I come from a culture where we do not celebrate our skin color. Instead, we celebrate the skin color of white people and try to emulate that same fairness. So many times, relatives have touched my cheeks and complimented me on my fair skin. I was 'blessed' to be fair. No one wants a dark girl. I have never understood this train of thought. One of my friends I found beautiful was darker than me, and yet, my mother insisted that I was prettier because I was fair. The first time I heard that, I was somehow hurt because someone I thought was beautiful inside and out wasn't being appreciated because she was dark. Why do we hold fair skin in such high regard? Let me rephrase: Why do we harbor such disdain for dark skin?
Stories of little girls trying to sandpaper their skin to try to become fairer, women spending their money on scams for fair skin, Fair and Lovely being one of the most popular beauty creams (guaranteed to make you fairer!), and incidents of husbands throwing acid on their new wives' faces because they weren't as fair as their pictures are rampant in India. On the other hand, fair girls are pampered and praised for their beauty but are scolded when they go out in the sun (God forbid I get tanned and mistakenly thought to have a dark complexion).
I asked my mother why she thought dark wasn't beautiful. I asked her if it only applied to girls. My mom seemed surprised. “I don't have such biases, I don't know what you're talking about. Why, I thought that girl we saw the other day was pretty and she was dark,” she said. I was surprised. We as a community didn't seem aware that we acted like this, that we felt this way. “Okay,” I said. “Let me ask you this. You find dark skinned girls beautiful. But would you let one marry into our family?”
She was a silent for a second before admitting with difficulty that she would do her best to make that a last resort.
“Why,” I asked, “Is it some residue of the appreciation of white people?”
She replied saying it's just more socially acceptable to have a fair girl. We have no reason to reject the dark skinned of our race other than the fact that our society does not like it. My dad sighed in relief not because he may have personally thought that dark isn't beautiful, but because having a dark daughter made it a lot harder for society to accept her. No parent wants their child to feel the rejection of society so they try to marry their fair children to fair husbands/wives so they can have their own fair children and therefore, continue being seen as beautiful, safe from the cruel words of society. Something we all seem to know but somehow not realize is that we make up this society. By trying to protect ourselves and our children from a ruthless society, we propagate this notion that not only is fair an ideal standard of beauty, but dark is just not beautiful.
Appreciating the beauty of fair skin is good I suppose, but do we stop to think the effect this has on dark skinned people? To feel constantly inadequate because they were born with the apparent misfortune of being dark? I knew a girl who got rejected by a boy who said he found her to be too dark. She cried all night and then screamed at her mother for cursing her with her dark skin. I myself have been asked by a boy if I had rejected him because he was dark and I was horrified because it wasn't even a thought that had crossed my mind. Dark skinned parents will probably have children who are dark. And they too know the pressures of being dark, what their dusky complexion means for their children but they are helpless towards the cruel sneers of society.
Right now, a movement is gaining momentum in India called 'Unfair and Lovely'- named after the skin lightening cream that is popular in India (started by Pax Jones and sisters, Mirusha and Yanusha Yogarajah, University of Texas, through a series of pictures taken of the girls celebrating their dusky color), trying to get women to celebrate their duskiness. We have a range of color from a rich dark chocolate skin tone to skin the color of buttermilk. Girls have been abused for their skin color, they have cried at their reflection in the mirror because their fair friend gets more compliments than her, because they heard their aunts talk amongst themselves about how 'it's such a shame that she's dark, she would be so pretty otherwise'. They have harmed themselves trying to fix something that was never damaged, both mentally and physically. They have had to learn to accept themselves from scratch because society tore them down. I know a great many girls who aren't as pale as they would have to liked to be, but the years have taught them to love themselves and many of them wish that someone had taught them to it sooner. Today they are confident women who are rallying to inspire the girls of today, struggling to find a place where they can see themselves as beautiful, through the eyes of society.
I can't help but wonder what makes us look at white skin in such wonder when dark skin possesses a beauty that is just as different and unique. Even now, when a white person walks through our streets, heads turn appreciatively and Indians marvel at the radiant glow of white skin that we- as Indians- could never have. Even now, a white person would be treated differently in my country, with a sort of reverence- with Indians falling over themselves to please that snowy-skinned foreigner who is of a level of beauty and attractiveness beyond that of our race. I wonder if they know that beneath the snowy skin, is a person who questions their physical beauty everyday too. We have all experienced that familiar fear of not being able to attain the physical ideal. Let's all appreciate the beauty that we have been blessed with- fair, dark, tall, short, skinny, fat, whatever else there is to love so that no one will feel lesser than the other because someone else said so.
