Let the irony of the fact that people with an ‘Indian skin tone’ are looked down upon in India not be lost on us. Women (obviously) have it worse, much like most other things in the country. Because, shaadi kaun karega?
My story is no different — childhood was a blurry mess where I’d find myself blindly applying a homemade sickly paste to my face every other day because ‘friendly neighbourhood aunty’ pointed in its direction and exclaimed, ‘THIS IS IT’. Over the years, the mental block got cemented, ‘haldi chandan’ was swapped with ‘skin lightening creams’ and I went further down the rabbit hole of skin-tone shaming.
Only after I started fending for myself, did I realise that I wasn’t slogging my ass off at work, 6 days a week, only to put my hard-earned money into a ‘revolutionary formula’ that tells me I’m not enough. Little by little, I started seeing myself through a lens that wasn’t tainted by the colour of my skin. A longing gaze at a friend belonging to the opposite end of the colour spectrum soon turned into a confident gaze at the woman in the mirror. I loved her and her brown skin and her acne scars and her enormous nose and her broad shoulders and her tummy rolls. She wasn’t damaged goods; she was exactly what I’d ordered for.
Don’t get me wrong, I still sheepishly look down at my feet each time a Tinder date or a chatty colleague exclaims how gorgeous my skin tone is. I’m still awkward about being complimented on my physical appearance but I’ll get there one day, I know I will. And when I’m there, I’ll flash my widest grin and proudly say, “Thank you, I know that.”