Does my melanin bother you so much, that I grew up thinking light-skinned means beautiful?
Does my melanin bother you so much that I played with fair skinned, blonde haired Barbie dolls wanting to look like them?
Does my melanin bother you so much that I cannot swim because I never attended swimming lessons for a fear of getting a tan?
I am a brown girl of a lighter skin tone. Thus, naturally when the Aunties (remember the nosy ladies who are not your relatives but they have an opinion on every aspect of your life) run into me, I get bombarded with comments like ‘Wow, you’re so fair, so beautiful,’ and even worse ‘What do you apply on your skin. Tell us your secret.’ Now at the time, I thought that these were compliments and took great pride in my skin tone. Little did I understand the plight of girls with darker skin tones. From accounts recounted by my friends who are darker, I can tell you that the Aunties have been much less kind to them. Passive aggressive comments like ‘You would be more beautiful if you were fairer,’ ‘Don’t go out into the sun, you will get dark’ and ‘Even though she is dark, she is quite pretty,’ are the norm in brown households. These comments are enough to shatter the confidence of any teenage girl who has only ever seen light skinned models and actresses on TV, sending them spiralling into a deep abyss of self-loathing and feelings of inadequacy. Even at weddings, I would catch snippets of conversations where the Aunties would compare the compatibility of the couple based off their skin tone; ‘Pretty bride but the groom is a bit too dark noh?’ or ‘They should have made the bride look fairer at least with make up?’
But are the Aunties really to blame? They never grew up seeing any sort of representation in the beauty industry. What they would have seen is tall, skinny white models plastered on the cover of magazines, shaping their minds to believe only in heavily Eurocentric ideas of beauty. I can most certainly guarantee that the Aunties too were at one point told that they were too dark at one point in their childhood resulting in a vicious cycle of believing that fair is beautiful.
But where did this obsession with fair skin begin? Who is the Big Bad? Yes, all roads do lead to European Colonialism. Colourism in South Asia is rooted in British colonial rule which created a notion of social hierarchy placing darker skinned people in lower castes. Even today, the parasitical caste system prevails in countries like India which acts as a barrier when securing employment and finding a spouse.
The beauty industry is a major culprit in exacerbating notions of colourism. Take a moment and think how many times you have seen light skinned celebrities like the Kardashian-Jenners on the cover of vogue magazine? More times than you would care to admit. Now how many times have you seen black models on the cover? Not nearly as many times. And what about Asian and South Asian models? You could count them on one hand. To me as a young girl, this perpetuated the idea that you could only get onto the face of a magazine only if you are white, meaning that girls that looked like me had no chance. It’s not just the magazines. Cosmetic companies like L’Oreal, Garnier and even Unilever continue to exploit the obsession with light skin and fuelling the notion of colourism with their skin lightening products. And you know that skin-lighteners are popular when it has a global market of $8.6 billion. It’s not difficult to understand that these billion dollar companies couldn’t care less about the societal impact that these products have. South Asian and African cities and villages are bombarded with billboards and TV commercials of local and international celebrities using the product.
A typical advertisement would be:
a light skinned celebrity is made 5 tones darker with make-up
depressed because her job/dating life is not going well
Someone recommends a skin whitening cream to her which she uses
Cut to a screen where they show her skin lightening to an unnaturally white-pinkish tone (obviously with Photoshop NOT a miracle cream)
Two weeks of using the cream, her skin is fairer and she is suddenly the CEO of her company and engaged to a handsome man
NO. Skin whitening creams cannot perform miracles. What it can do is cause hyper-pigmentation, dryness, irritation and strip you of your melanin leaving you more susceptible to skin cancer. How do I know this? Because me and millions of other girls have used these products to achieve the same results.
The assassination of George Floyd and the BLM movement shed a new light on the issue of colourism, leading to several social media campaigns like the Vogue challenge. This pressurised most skin lightening cosmetic brands to rethink their marketing strategies and be less aggressive with their message of ‘fair is better.’ However, this has resulted in very little change with products like ‘Fair and Lovely’ being renamed to ‘Glow and Lovely’ which is of no use as it continues to perpetuate the same idea. But let’s look at the brighter side of things. While I grew up watching Disney films like Snow White where the Queen went berserk simply because she wasn’t the ‘fairest of them all’ children of the present generation watch movies like ‘Moana’ and ‘Encanto’ which have strong female leads who are of coloured origin. That’s the importance of representation. Darker skinned children will grow up believing that they are not an anomaly in the system. They will grow up believing that their skin is beautiful. They will not try to bleach their skin, hopefully causing the skin whitening industry to become oblivious (one can hope). And they will shatter the ‘fair is beautiful mentality.’
I have learnt to love my melanin. And so should you.
---- Draupadi Senanayake, Guest Blogger
Comments