“Ma’am, but these are for black people”, protested a makeup store sales girl to me as I tried on a foundation shade that finally matched my skin. The sales girl looked very serious and concerned. This was the first time I had ventured out to buy makeup for myself. However, this was not the first time I was witnessing a South Asian makeup store sales-girl try to sell lighter makeup to a dark skinned woman. 

Buying face makeup as a dark-skinned Pakistani is a real struggle in a country where grocery store shelves are neatly lined with Fair and Lovely (now changed to Glow and Lovely as if it didn’t cause any damage). 

It is believed that a lighter foundation shade will make one’s skin appear fairer. Why are makeup sales-people taught to push customers to buy lighter foundation shades? Because the notion that fairer complexion is better and insecurities about dark skin are heavily capitalized on.

Susan Albuhawa concedes to this in her piece, Confronting anti-black racism in the Arab world, explaining how anglicizing industries of skin bleaching and hair straightening are so profitable (p. 2). 

She talks about the link between images of power and wealth with Eurocentric features such as light skin, straight hair, and small noses (p. 2). Time and time again, I have seen this message being presented in advertisements for South Asian fairness or skin whitening products. I once saw an ad where a woman with a dark complexion performed underwhelmingly in a job interview. However, after using the specific fairness cream advertised, she became lighter skinned and excelled at her job interview. While this might reflect the harsh reality of institutional colorism, it romanticizes the reality and ridiculously almost justifies colorism, blaming the victims and motivating them to “change”.

Albuhawa further talks about how the image rejects melanin rich skin, coiled hair, and broad or pointy noses. An important aspect of the text is bringing light to the colonialist association of these features with laziness and inferiority. An intersectional dimension exists in colorist discourse where conversations of social class and caste intersect with colorism. Dark skinned individuals are assumed to be poor and lower caste based on the caste system, and hence are stuck in a double bind where they experience microaggressions and marginalization related to class and caste alongside skin color.

This week, my discussion group and I discussed the topic of colorism and beauty standards and I got to hear about experiences that were either similar to mine or were new and unique. We discussed how capitalism and Eurocentric beauty standards feed into each other. This is because capitalism functions on creating the demand and need around products. In this case, it creates a perceived need to conform to Eurocentric beauty standards, capitalizing on the insecurities of people of color, and hence running successful and profitable businesses that contribute to the economy. 

However, perhaps I see a light at the end of this tunnel as the democratizing power of social media pushes to subvert beauty standards everyday. Content creators are doing their best to call out colorist and Eurocentric beauty standards and the people are becoming more likely to reject such problematic standards and boycott the consumption of anglicizing industries.