We Haven’t Left the Dark
Image: Unsplash
It is impossible to grow up brown and AFAB and not be deeply, inherently, aware of your skin. It is impossible to grow and not know its pitch and shade, how it darkens in the sun, calls the response of every auntie’s opinion, marks your value in society, in the bridal market, what price it’ll fetch for your life, before it even has the chance to turn bumpy, hyperpigmented, and pimple-ridden. Being born female and South Asian, sentences you to a life of cognizance about skin colour even if you’re ‘lucky’ enough to be born fair. Being born dark-skinned curses you with the same cognizance, the awareness that you’ll never be light enough, that there are consequences for this.
This is, in sum, what I gleaned from interviewing a dark-skinned woman, Vidya*, about her experience. She’s a beautiful woman – defined nose pierced with a glittering nose ring, arched eyebrows, full lips, skin smooth and dark, pecan brown. She told me that people had often complimented her by saying that she was beautiful, for her colour, how it felt like a consolation rather than a commendation. There was never a moment she wasn’t conscious of her colour, of what it meant for her. This is the same, in my experience and, I am sure, for all brown girls, no matter if they grow up in the West or with brown people. But while I was fair enough to only have been instilled with a shade of a fear for darkening, encouraged marginally to stay out of the sun and consider Fair and Lovely, dark skin haunted this woman like a disease.
Vidya told me, set the scene, of how she had declared her intention to cure herself and others of melanin as a kid. She grew up back home, in a South Asian country, wore white uniform dresses to an all-girls school, hated how the white cloth contrasted against her skin, emphasized her darkness, and tied green ribbons in braided hair. People were, naturally, dark around her; she had taken after her father, was told this, was always aware. It was, simply, a factor that would make her life hard, that, as she said, “I would have to work harder and that I’m less desirable.” She was around ten, in school, having just learned what melanin was, when she declared that she planned to be a scientist to stop melanin production and, “help girls like [her].” Her friends were, naturally, neutrally supportive, as friends are when your young and want to be a doctor, teacher, astronaut.
That darkness equates ugliness is an inherent principle, a definition of beauty, we all learn young. Discrimination against dark-skinned people is an easy thing to catch and witness. People make comments about infants, the shade of their new skin, how unfortunate it might be. Film and music cements it in the popularity of fair skinned actresses, the incessant ads for Fair and Lovely, Ponds soap, the love for fair skin in songs like “Yathai Yathai,” the great sacrifice/wonderment of loving a dark-skinned woman in “Karuppu Nerathazhagi.” One has to go out of their way to not catch on and know this definition by heart. This manifests past insecurity in skin. Vidya told me, in her own life, she noticed her lighter-skinned friends received love notes, was approached more, garnered much more attention from men while she was sidelined. People had automatically approached pretty (i.e., fair) people, found them to be pleasant enough to be approachable. People would, alas, approach her only to get to her friends.
The solution for social acceptance, for her, having grown up and realized reducing pigmentation wasn’t exactly feasible, was to compensate in humour. Vidya is funny. She is witty and quick, finds it quick and easy to crack a good joke at her own expense, squeeze out a laugh, trade it in for credence. One may call it, misguidedly, humility. Hannah Gadsby called it humiliation for those already existing in the margins in her special, saying, that self-deprecation functions as a path in which one puts themselves down “to speak, in order to seek permission to speak.”
There is an inclination to stay in the margins, I think, to obey the rules, especially when one has been placed there by, has woken up one day and only ever breathed the air made available to them. Outside of self-deprecation, verbal presentation, Vidya dressed herself in muted colours so as to not emphasize her dark skin. Maroon has always been lauded to be for dark girls and so she only ever bought maroon, dark blue, never brown because it was too close to the skin, never any colour to sit stark against her skin. Her father still thinks her favourite colour is maroon. It wasn’t until after high school that she thought to wear anything else, only found out in university that she loved baby blues infinitely better. The label of ugly, undesirable followed her into adulthood. She hadn’t thought to think of her body as something to flaunt, covered as it is in her skin. It took friends to take notice of her figure, compliment her without consolation nor hint of backhandedness, and encourage her to wear things to make her feel good, feel beautiful, desirable.
AFAB South Asians are consistently, inevitably, led to consider their beauty, desirability, in marriage. It is, as our parents will insist, the beginning of our lives, the most pivotal moment that determines your and your kids’ lives. Every aspect of our being comes into question. There is a right and a wrong way for every characteristic and as the cons line up against you (short, fat, dark, ugly) your chances of a good match sinks, so do your future kids’ chances at living well. Vidya recounted how she used to be somewhat angry with her mother when she was young, had asked her why she had to marry a dark-skinned man and do this to her kids, wanted to marry a light-skinned man to “give [her] kids a chance.” As she grew older and found that brown men tend to put their attention toward light-skinned women, learned the reluctance families have in marrying their fair son to a dark-skinned woman, heard how her mother and aunties in the community would gossip about such matches, conclude that the groom could have done better, that the wife would make the kids too dark, Vidya understood she would have to settle, in a sense, for a dark-skinned husband.
This is not, she wanted to be clear, about the beauty of dark-skinned men. For her, she had never been less attracted to dark-skin. For her, it boiled down to what life her children might be afforded, how much melanin they might be cursed with, how much it’ll affect their lives in the future. Ultimately, in a way that is almost inexplicable and accidental to her, Vidya is now with a lighter-skinned man. Vidya told me it was shocking to wind up with a brown man fairer than her when she knows most of them strive towards, think themselves lucky to be have a light-skinned woman. It is natural for light-skinned women to be with dark-skinned men, it is something she has seen before and is familiar with. Her own relationship was a novelty, an oddity. The fact that her partner doesn’t care, tells her that he doesn’t care what the colour of her skin is, settled strangely for her. She couldn’t fathom how he hadn’t paid mind to this most basic definition of beauty.
They are serious, Vidya and her partner. She knows she will marry him one day. They’ve discussed it, made plans for the future. They fit together well and she knows they will spend their lives happy together. She asked, soon after finding herself in a long-term relationship with a light-skinned man who intends to be with her for as long as possible, if his mother would mind her dark skin. Her partner is vehement that his family is not prejudiced like that, would never think to care about something so inconsequential as skin colour. Vidya doesn’t trust this, knows firsthand how consequential, detrimental, skin colour can be. Vidya doesn’t think any less of her partner’s mother, doesn’t think her to be evil by any stretch. She simply thinks of her to be a mother who wants the best for her son, someone who knows how we have defined beauty and wishes for her son to marry someone beautiful, fitting.
She has, Vidya tells me, done a lot of work to love herself, love her skin in how dark and rich in colour it is, to change, at least, her own definition of beauty. It shows in how she presents herself now. She is still funny, less self-deprecating, is happy to drape herself in pale, pastel colours, barely has a shade of maroon in her closet. She is beautiful and sometimes knows this intrinsically, beyond any indication someone else may give her. Even so, cognizance of her skin, what its darkness means, stalks her. After moving to Canada, her relatives back home praised her for getting lighter in the snow and sickly lack of sun. She told me she still hopes her kids won’t have her skin, will luck out and be fair.
Colourism is an old, poisonous heirloom we’ve been passing down, generation to generation. It is a colonial mindset reinforced by our passing hands, allowing it to hunt and stalk dark-skinned people in our community, especially dark-skinned women. We’ve stayed in past, in the dark ages, sustaining this definition of beauty, enabling it to define our lives and livelihood in return. When will we leave it?
*names have been changed to maintain anonymity.
