I’m the girl who’s instantly offered whitening facials in a salon even if I go to get my upper-lip hair waxed. I’m the woman in a small town who has been rejected and is ‘still on the shelf’. I’m that cousin of yours who you will never find pretty regardless of how scintillating I try to be. You see, I’m suffering from a ‘disease’: kala rang (dark complexion).
They talk about me daily on morning shows; remedies to cure me of this condition are readily available on TV. So frightening is the ailment that I’m almost on the verge of deciding to never step out in the daylight lest the cruel sun catches a glimpse of me, and I go from kali to bahut kali (very dark) for my relatives.
Those days aren’t far when whitening labels would be found on food packages (to be consumed in whole at daytime to glow like a tube-light at night), or some compassionate herbalist lady would come out with a chalk that one simply smears on one’s face to look gora (fair-complexioned). Even then our ladies would complain, “The chalk shade wasn’t the right white, I wanted a fairer face).
Which brings me to the question: who keeps this obsession with gori rangat (fair complexion) alive in our society? Men or females? I’m of the opinion that it’s the womenfolk; women who would only settle for a fair daughter-in-law have also passed this check-her-complexion-then-reject gene to her son. The theory being that a fair daughter-in-law will produce fair grandchildren, which will ultimately lead to an albino Pakistani society! The dream of our Quaid. Okay, maybe not.
Our society makes no room for dusky ones; we are the untouchables, it seems. The kali Pakistani has to work doubly hard on her persona to leave any kind of a social impact; her fairer counterpart will have many doors open for her even if she happens to be intellectually less smart. Instead of shaming this ideology and putting it in its rightful place (read: the trashcan) our social fabric continues to promote the idea. Ladies throng to beauty parlours in hopes of looking their fairest, and not their best. Physical features be damned.
Me, and many girls like me, would be considered an outcaste because of this one physical aspect. In Pakistan if you don’t look Persian, pity is reserved for you and not pyaar (love). We get second-best prize in men; dark men are generally mocked in their friends’ circle too. Some men smile through the insults while others internalise it. We are obsessed anyhow with making fun of people’s physical features.
We frown upon dark-skinned people, and we look up to fair-skinned ones as a benchmark in beauty. Even the most ordinary looking fair-skinned person struts like a hero because society cannot stop swooning over his milk and rose skin. In familial settings, my so-called loved ones have also bestowed me with the nationality of another South Asian country because in their mind by doing so they were bringing down my ‘social value’. Who is to decide that Dravidian looks are inferior to Aryan features?
It is time to own up to this beautiful brown shade and reject all those who think of us as lesser beings. Companies that make skin-whitening creams will continue selling their tanning creams in the west while cashing in on fair-skin complex in the east. The need of the hour is for wheatish and dusky-skinned females to take a bold stand and stop contributing with their money to advancement of anything labelled ‘whitening’. Don’t encourage this colonial mindset by secretly trying out home remedies too.
Wouldn’t it be awesome if girls of an impressionable age are taught to look in the eye those who mock their dark colour and say, “Yes, I may be dark, but you have a regressive mindset, and there is no cream for that darkness.” It is important to dismantle the culture of mocking, layer by layer. When we embrace ourselves, and are not pressurised by name-calling, we take the power in our hands. They will never make room for us; we have to push ourselves in. It is great to work on your education or your interpersonal skills, but equally important is to wear your skin with pride, skin that nature designed for you. This is the only way to cure a society ailing from this hideous complexion-complex, but till that happens, keep praying for its recovery. Get well
soon, Pakistan!
The writer is a freelance columnist with a degree in Cultural Studies and a passion for social observation, especially all things South Asian. She tweets @chainacoffeemug