Soon after I came to the US, I was given the new
identity of a “brown” person. At first, the label disturbed me. The color brown
was not something I had ever related to. I was used to being praised for being
“fair” and having a “good complexion.” Having grown up in North India, I had
become conditioned to pride in the social privilege that comes with having a
lighter skin tone.
Coming to the US changed that. My first roommate was
several shades lighter than me. In fact, most people around me were. When
spring break came around, I asked a friend what she was planning.
“I’m going to Hawaii. My goal this break will be to become
as dark as you.”
She had meant that as a compliment. But it felt far
from one to me. The losing battle against fairness is fought by thousands of
Indians back home. A popular, yet dark-skinned, Indian actress recently became
the face of the “Dark is Beautiful” campaign to protest against India’s irrational
obsession with light skin, one that drowns countless women’s self-esteem and
leads some to the unfortunate fate of suicide. Fairness is a prerequisite to
validate a woman’s worth, and it determines her marriage or employment prospects.
In a society with such priorities, India's “fairness products” market swelled
from $397 million in 2008 to $638 million in 2012. In the past, women had been
the sole targets of such rampant, ruthless and self-deprecating advertising,
but now men’s fairness products are catching attention on the country’s market.
The ideal parameters of tall, dark, and handsome will soon be modified for our
men.
No
wonder throughout college, I had always been puzzled and simultaneously
fascinated that so many girls would wait eagerly for a bright sunny sky to put
on their bikinis and sprawl on the “beach,” often hoping to tan themselves just
in time for their Saturday night adventures. On such days, I would only walk on
routes with the most number of trees along the way, so I could guard my skin
with every square inch of shade possible. I would wonder how girls back in
India would die to have white skin like that of my friends in college. The same
friends who instead call themselves pale and cannot wait to become more
“colored.”
I
sometimes wish skin color was the only trait we made ourselves and others feel
terrible about. I recall talking to a friend from South Korea when I first got
to the US. I asked her if she wanted to go back home at some point.
“No.
Absolutely not.”
“What
makes you so sure?”
“Because
I don’t have to change myself here.”
Back
in Korea, she would have had little choice except to follow the bandwagon of
plastic surgery to enhance the folds of her eyelids to make her eyes look larger
and prettier. My eyelids are something I had never before focused on, yet my
friend caught the difference in one glance. Her skin color meant little to her.
She was fair, much fairer than I am, but how she wished her eyes were like
mine.
We do not make it easy for people anywhere around the
globe to be comfortable in their skin. Be it our hair, our color, our eyes, or
something else, as a society we are thriving on comparing ourselves to others
and then trying feverishly and often unsuccessfully to become someone we aren’t.
Is this truly the reality in a world where we are supposedly taught to value
and embrace our diversity?
