In her article for Al-Jazeera, Susan Abulhawa, speaks about how “An extension to Arab anti-black racism is an aspiration to all that our former – and current – colonizers possess.” She goes on to explain how euro-centric beauty standards still have a chokehold on societies in the global south, and how this causes generations of people of color to resent and internally hate themselves for their natural features such as darker skin, coiled hair, and wider and larger bodies. She speaks about how anglicized features are associated with superiority and how this fuels the commercialization of skin bleaching, eating disorders, and hair straightening.
Desi-Americans often complain about how they are unable to see themselves on screen because of how the majority of Hollywood is white. But this is where we are a minority, we must be able to see ourselves in an abundance in our own local media, right? Wrong. Despite the majority of our people being darker skinned, the people that are handpicked to be on our screens and represent us are very light-skinned. These actors are local, but, they have often undergone extreme skin lightening procedures to make themselves more “appealing.”
Where does all this leave us? As a Pakistani, I have grown up being told by the local media that my natural features are not “appropriate” to be shown in public, despite them being the ones I was born with and the ones that other people of my ethnicity also shared. The advertisements on television and on billboards told me I needed to be fair to be lovely- pun intended. I was also forced to straighten my naturally curly hair for weddings, meetings, and job interviews, or I would be considered unkempt and unprofessional. I can recall one time when I had fainted at home and my mother frantically straightened my hair while I was still half-unconscious before taking me to the hospital, instead of rushing me out right away. As a child, I was also made to spend most of my time indoors to “preserve” my relatively fairer skin tone and told not to play in the sunlight or I would “turn black.”
Despite how cliché and rudimentary it may seem, at a certain point, all the ugly evils in society can be linked to one another. This association of fair skin with superiority that colonialism left us has now been used for misogynistic and race-based oppression, fueled by capitalism. Today, the skin lightening industry is booming globally and is expected to reach USD 24 billion by 2027. Half of this is just Asia.
Hello, your blog post was fascinating to read . It’s very unfortunate to see this happening in our world. I never knew this was a thing till I read it ,how different races can have these consequences in their own country or different country and is forced to something to be “representful”to them and in their perspective
The annecdote you shared here about your mom straightening your hair is infuriating but believable. Coming from India myself, I can connect with everything you said about fairer skin. Even if the actors on our screens have not gone through extensive skin treatment, they are still prioritized because of their fairer skin. It makes no sense but it directly shows us the consequences of our colonial past.