As We discussed McClintock’s Imperial Leather: Race, Gender, and Sexuality in the Colonial Contest in class lectures, searching for the book I came about a heavily illustrated section of the book. Unable to access the images, but eager and intrigued, I came about an article which talked about these illustrations she visited and talked about. One of them, which I will be discussing in this blog, and referring to the continuity spectrum of such advertisements.

 

The book cites an advertisement where three little African boys sail on a supposedly seen boat which is made out of a soap box. One of these boys has his skin bleached white, while the text underneath it reads “We are going to use ‘Chlorinal’ and be like de white nigger.” This advertisement spoke the harsh truth of blatant internalization of white as pure, clean, and worthy of living as compared to the people of color, who have to try and achieve this level of whiteness to be considered worth living and of importance.

 

                                                    

Further analysis of the picture, we see the bleached white child sitting separate from the two black children, which depicts the reality, even in advertisements and amongst children, of the wall created from color, strengthened by racial fetishism. Not only that, the white child is the one having control of the boat, and thus has control of the oar, projecting that the world is dominated by the white, and they only have control of them – driving the ‘others’ and using them to make their path a success.

 

While we may consider this to be only present in books of history and with the wide-spread activism prevalent now, it should be a disgrace to even have hints of such advertisements on our mass media. However, in reference to being a colonized country myself and being a South-Asian, our brown and dusky skin has always been a source of inferiority for ourselves, leave alone to the wider European community. We have internalized the notion that white is indeed pure, that being fair is the epitome of beauty, that to be perfect, the first thing needed is being white. This internalization wasn’t just born into us, it was build and inscribed throughout history – from advertisements such as those in McClintock’s book. It is prevalent even today. Recently, a very popular local whitening cream named ‘Fair & Lovely’ which has a tremendous consumer market, was targeted on social media for distorting women’s self-esteem and framing as white being the ultimate form of beauty. The name itself, denoted what two elements made the ultimate combination of superiority for females.

 

It was until recently a month ago, that this years long beauty industry decided to change its course in Pakistan and value the true colors of females where the Fair and Lovely team issued a public apology, but still continued selling its products under the name ‘Glow and Lovely’. It is worth noting that although the name change is a first step, it is still continually extending the notion of having white skin, of using it as mode of glorifying racism, leading to the very much prominent, commodity racism. According to McClintock, ‘Commodity racism is a term that refers to the way in which race and commodities mutually inform one another’. This commodity racism was the British’s key tool in the colonization and has been successful then, and is there even now, encompassing the powerful image of domination of the white today. It then comes to the question, if we will ever realize the long-term consequences of this infatuation with whiteness, because if we don’t stop now, these bleaching creams will be the ones dominating us, even centuries from now exasperating the racism we have been trying to curb.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[This is just a short piece I wrote about a thought I had, not for submission to grad TA]

In the Colonizer and The Colonized, Albert Memmi manifest his own experience as being both experiencing the privileges of colonizer while also the downsides of being colonized due to his Tunisian ethnicity. He writes ‘A colonizer who agrees to be a colonizer. By making his position explicit, he seeks to legitimize colonization’. He further mentions that the colonialist mission is to bring civilization to the uncivilized terming it as ‘charitable racism’.

 

This made me wonder about something recently, in a conversation with an international friend of mine. As I shared the pictures of my sister’s wedding events, she was alarmed at the fact that my sister donned a pure bright red dress on her wedding – a staple traditional Pakistani wedding dress.

 

We immediately noticed and asked, why my sister wore something as bright as red when all other brides she had ever seen, in her own community, on television etc. were always dressed in pure white dress. Her question made me wonder for a moment, I never thought about why our weddings were so different from those shown on western TV shows, why our weddings weren’t bonded by the groom kissing the bride and the bride wearing a white dress. I never knew, and I never questioned.

 

Picture source: Freepik and ClipartKey

What was interesting however, was that I found many of the more ‘modern’ Pakistani bridges breaking the stereotypes of a traditional red dress and instead of opting for a white dress on their big day. For me this was alarming – white was something reserved in our culture for grief – a white cloth for the coffin, relatives wearing white to funerals, etc. This made white traditionally a color which did not resonate with happiness.

 

As I ponder about this concept of charitable racism, I see it present in this wedding dress phenomenon – I see white replacing the traditional red dress which personified bright futures and prosperity. And I see this happening at the hands of western influence, an approach colonizing our minds to the extent that we replace traditions that mean so much value to us. – naming it as ‘modernity’. But who described what’s modern? Why do we as colonized countries always adapt to these pre-conceived sets of ways of life while disowning our own cultures and values?

 

While the dress maybe a tiny piece of the puzzle that makes up how our minds have been colonized, it is indeed a part that is so closely linked to our everyday lives. I wonder if in the near future we will replace how a wedding is formalized with a nikkah in the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, hampering not only our cultural roots, but religious roots as well.