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Eeshah Omer

Eeshah Omer

The writer is a student of political science, and passionately pursues challenges brought by shifts in trends and current affairs. She instagrams at instagram.com/eeshaww and tweets at @EeshahOmer

White is the New Black: Sanam Jung’s morning show causes public uproar

Published on: March 17, 2018 7:14 PM

Morning shows in Pakistan tend to stir up some controversy to spice up their ratings every now and then. However, most times the backlash doesn’t settle into the equation for too long, and sooner than later people tend to forget about all the meaningless drama.

Recently, talk show host Sanam Jung, who hosts Jago Pakistan Jago aired on Hum TV, has come under the radar for mocking dark skin and sending yet another racist message being propagated to Pakistani audiences. As if Sana Safinaz’s recently alleged ‘racist’ campaign did not relegate to enough of a disaster in its depiction of ignorance and casual attitude towards serious concerns in our society, the curious case of ‘blackface’ is just what we needed next to ramp up the offensive.

In the segment of the show that went with the name ‘Mera Makeup Hai Kamal,’ participants in the competition were assigned to the much “challenging” task of giving dark-skinned women a bridal makeover, implying the very underlying fact that dark-skinned women can make beautiful brides too, contrary to the gori bahu notion of every scrambling mother-in-law who’s lethal ambition is to develop a fixation with “whiteness” and “fair and lovely” tampered skin in and around their homes.

Needless to say, the models that were given makeovers were not dusky or dark-toned; they were fair-skinned, artificially made to appear darker in stark contrast to their original colour, as the participants had to paint their brides’ faces using the “Negro” shade of Kryolan TV paint stick foundation. This was then followed by a series of unnecessary obstacles and racial slurs by the host and mentors, where the participants’ performance was purposefully handicapped by the condition that they could only use one hand to do the make-up along with being assigned insufficient time to do their jobs. Also, terms like “habshi, “habshan“, “makrani” and “negro” were reiterated an adequate and casual amount of times throughout the span of the episode, belittling Pakistani ethnicities like Makrani and Sheedi. 

The end result was indeed as evident of a mess as is portrayed in the stills from the show, with arms of both the models visibly light in colour in obvious comparison to their upper portion.



More backward aspects of the show presented examples such as a solicitous mentor, Amber, saying: “I’ve done the makeover of so many brides, but I’ve never had such a bride, like a Habshan, ever. But you are being presented with this challenge.”

The participants were also restricted from lightening the dark skin of brides in any fathomable way possible, so much so that they were even instructed to refrain from colour correcting their brides’ undereye circles.

Resultantly, the episode was lambasted on social media for its shameful and disgraceful attempt at spreading a “positive” message.

A user took to Facebook in a public post, which read, “When some of you shared this with me, I honest to God couldn’t believe it. Like in my head I was like, there’s got to be something I’m missing here, they’re not THIS blatantly ignorant or stupid for that matter. They took fair skinned girls and literally painted their faces darker with a foundation to prove good makeup could also be done on darker skinned brides. My question is Sanam, was it really that hard to find darker skinned models to do makeup on? This is a caricature like scenario, you’ve painted on a a much darker face onto fair skinned girls, look at their hands and their arms. It’s like you’re purposefully and intentionally making them look comical. How is this not something close to #blackface. I’m going to ask you the same question I asked a brand last week, how did you let this happen? How is this appropriate? How did you let this go live even? If you really had good intentions about darker skin tones and how makeup should be done, you and I both know well this wasn’t the way to do it. Rather you have contributed to an already disgusting sentiment in our society about darker skin tones in a fair skin obsessed Pakistan. I don’t even want to get started on how cringy the actual SHOW SEGMENT was.”

“What is up with these morning shows? Instead of hiring dark skin beauties they decided to slather dark brown foundation on fair girls?” wrote a user on Twitter.

Another added, “Found this episode of Jago Pakistan Jago utterly offensive! MUA’s were set a task to show darker complexion can also look pretty. The racist word negro was used repeatedly. They hired fair girls instead of naturally darker complexion models. Why do we measure beauty by skin tone?!”

“I feel sick. Lawn campaigns in Pakistan comprise of using indigenous minorities & darker skinned people as props. Morning shows capitalize on the adornment of dark skin as a challenge. We propagate racism at home & complain about it abroad. Disgusting,” wrote another, speaking of the recent Sana Safinaz lawn campaign, which also sparked recent controversy for using Kenyan natives as props.

Other Twitterati backlash went as follows:

My question is: as a South Asian country, and in all honesty, was it that difficult to find young women of darker skin tones to celebrate the positive message of the segment? By the end of the show, makers of the program not only seemed to support the bias against dark skin by showing off the successful makeup expertise of the artistes but happened to mock it even more. It’s interesting to note here that while the team of the show has not released any statement regarding the disconcerting issue, pictures and stills from the show have been deleted from the official page of Jago Pakistan Jago.

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