FAIRNESS MADNESS
As she runs to her room, tears streaking down her face, she remembers her five year old self. It was a beautiful morning she revisits. The first day of vacation and her favorite aunt was coming home. She had woken up from an afternoon nap with sounds of laughter coming from the room next to hers. Grinning from ear to ear, flashing her dimples she scrambled down from her bed and rushed to meet her aunt on her tiny feet. “Oh my she has gotten darker! I was so fair when I was a child. I told you not to play in the sun Shreya,” her aunt had exclaimed as she entered. Little Shreya did not understand why her aunt was so upset. She looked down at her hands and feet and could not figure out what was so wrong.
Today she felt as helpless as she did that day. She had been getting ready from the morning to meet her boyfriend and his mother who would be seeing her today to ask for her hand. With butterflies going crazy in her stomach and a smile that just would not leave her, she lined her doe-like eyes with some kohl and dabbed some rosy lipstick on her lips. He had once said that she looked best in a saree, so she draped a soft pink saree and let her hair loose which fell in soft curls up to her waist. She could now hear her parents talking to his mother. They had arrived and her mother was asking her to come to the living room. She looked almost regal as she gracefully stepped inside the room with her heart pounding crazy inside. She sat down between her parents and smiled at Tanvir and then at his mother. “She is so dark! How did you think I will be alright with this Tanvir? I don’t want a dark bride for you,” his mother shouted at him. Her eyes were lined with rage and insolence. Shreya understood the hatred all too well but she still had hopes. She Tanvir to rely on. She looked at him and silently begged him to make his mother understand. But he just sat there looking at his feet while his mother kept insulting her. Her eyes were brimming with tears as he got up and said “sorry”. She had had enough and ran out in tears.
Shreya is just one among hundreds of girls who get scrutinized for their skin color every day. Beautiful little girls grow up thinking they are somehow inferior to girls with a lighter skin tone. This develops severe inferiority complex and depression which sometimes even leads to suicides.
The hierarchy skin color with the darker tones occupying its lower rungs is an upshot of our past. People of this part of the world have had no sense of inferiority in relation to darker skin until the Aryans conquest. Aryans were tall, strong and fair. After generations of intermixing, the entire subcontinent where notions of age-old hierarchy still haunts us. Though we have peoples with varying degrees of skin tones, the ill-conceived idea that fair skin looks superior sticks on. Though perpetuation of such a prejudice seems absurd, the sad reality is this — there are teens, women who are continually searching for a way to look fairer. Our misguided love for fair skin is tenuously linked with the idea that we were conquered by people with fair skin. The fashion and advertising industry alongside the film industry only exacerbate the matter. They stand united to promote skin apartheid — we never seen darker skinned idols in our midst. But we need to remember neither are we living in the era of conquest, nor are we a nation where this racial Puritanism is applicable since a good portion of the people look duskier than any fair-skinned beauty drawing our attention from the pages of a magazine or from the silver screen.
Due to the disdain for the dark skin, we often see mothers telling their daughters to not go out in the sun because they will get more tanned. Concoctions of turmeric, besan, rice are constantly used on young girls, along with lemon, yogurt, potatoes, tomatoes and what not! It seems as if there are more items in face packs than the food they eat! This in turn leads these young girls to turn to skin lightening creams and bleaching. Girls as young as 12 are seen using popular skin lightening creams in the hopes of becoming fair.
We need to let go of our hatred and misperception — to accept that we are all different and beautiful in our own way. We need to stand with each other and motivate ourselves to become better, kinder human beings, instead of tearing each other down by way of our misperceptions about race and gender.
Little girls should grow up feeling beautiful and confident in their own skin. The world is a place where there is room for everyone.
By Rafa Mashiyat Zahid
