When will the obsession with fair skin end?
When a child is born, it is oblivious of the fact about its skin color but as it grows the people around make it realize what the skin color is. The way people talk to a fair-skinned baby and the way they interact with a dark-skinned baby differs. It is easily visible to the child in talks, looks, and ways of handling. As the child grows they begin to observe how their skin color is compared to others. If the skin color is fair then they feel relieved that they are up to the societal mark and if not then the pressure begins. The seed for the need for fair skin is rooted right then and as the child grows into an adult, the obsession with fair skin keeps growing. The societal obsession has played its part and now the advertisers are doing their part by showcasing fair-skinned people as beautiful and smearing the same fair-skinned person with dark make-up to show how ugly they look when they are dark. The songs and movies never fail to stream how a fair girl gets more attention. The adult goes on to try product after product to change the skin color until they realize that it is next to impossible.
The worst part is yet to come when you are getting married. Your matrimonial photoshoot should make you look fair and your bio-data should clearly state that you are a fair-skinned person. Why is it made so hard for other skin colors to fit in the matrimonial part of life? If your skin color defines the person you are then what is the use of character building and searching for a compatible partner? The bias in the name of skin color is so huge, just imagine what the people who suffer from some kind of skin disease, surgery marks, scars, or burns, go through in society. No chance! There is no hope for their inclusivity in our so-called societal standard of beauty. A society that has created a web around itself and talks about spirituality and equality but hardly follows them in practicality.
The first step would be to recognize the problem and delve deep within ourselves because we as part of this society are not unaffected by the belief system of the society. Now is the time to keep reminding ourselves to back off whenever we pass any unconscious comment to ourselves on an instance of identifying beauty if it is the skin color we are looking at. This will change the habit of associating beauty with skin color and we will be progressing towards building an unbiased society. The burden lies on the shoulders of parents to make their children understand that skin color is just a feature of a person along with other physical features and it never defines beauty. The victims of colorism need to embrace their skin color and be at peace with themselves. They can be the harbinger of change by educating the people they come in contact with about their struggle, victory, and the need for change in societal perspective toward skin color. Only when we accept ourselves as we are, we are truly happy and capable of giving back to society what we can offer or are capable of.
Stop Skin Color Discrimination
The change has started. Brown N’ Proud, is an organization that has instigated a movement against skin color discrimination. Similarly, Women Of Worth started a campaign in 2009, Dark Is Beautiful – an internationally recognized advocacy campaign that has been fighting against and creating awareness about ‘Colourism’. There is the need to focus on building self-esteem and self-respect which will empower the youth of our country and create more productive, caring, and happy individuals which in turn will build an empowered society. An individual afflicted with an inferiority complex will never be happy and can never tap the potential inside them.
So, am I too brown to be proud? The answer is definitely no and I have started accepting and loving my skin tone fighting off all the past hauntings but trust me it’s never easy for a brown girl born, brought up and married in India.