By Madiha Zafar
Like most people, I have vague memories from when I was as young as four or five. But there are just a few memories which are clear as daylight. Some things leave a great impact on you and are quite impossible to forget. They define the way you think and perceive things, which is why people have different music tastes, favourite colours, ways of describing beauty… the list goes on.
My English teacher, who also happens to be a doctor, once told me that you can influence the mental foundations a child forms until the age of five. After that, they take their own route. So, that period will make or break the child.
No doubt this is an overly simplified explanation of a child's psychology. However, it helps us understand why prejudices and discrimination based on skin colour and beauty standards continue to exist in our Desi (South Asian) society.
Just like any family recipe and totkay (remedy), biases are also passed on from generation to generation.
One of my earliest memories is of spending time in Pakistan with my extended family during the summer. They all admired our cute sense of style and cute shoes and our fair skin tones. "Saudia mein pollution nahi hoti iss wajah se’ (due to the lack of pollution in Saudia, our skin tones were relatively fair). Their surprising reactions piqued my curiosity. I asked why they liked our fair skin tones. They told me that all the actresses on TV had fair skin and everyone loved them because their skin tones weren't ‘spoiled’ yet. They would say ‘aap ka rang tou saaf hai. Hamara rang kharab hai" (your skin tone is clear and ours is spoiled/not clear).
I didn't mind it back then because all I wanted to do was play with my aunts and cousins. I didn't care about my skin tone or my soft hair. I just wanted to play because I was a child.
But they kept nagging me and my sister. They told me that my hair was not as straight and silky as my sister’s. But at least I was fairer than her. Phew!
My sister was bony, and who likes a girl with no flesh? And me? I was so healthy Mashallah! Everyone likes a cute, chubby girl.
Years passed. The age of wearing beautiful clothes with heels and makeup was upon us. But wait a minute! I was still chubby. No one likes a fat girl. My sister was still skinny, just like the runway models.
They took us to the mirror on the first floor and compared our face structures. We were lucky because we were fair. It compensated for our fat noses. They asked me and my sister to compare the tones of our arms. I was fairer.
Everyone loved our almond-shaped eyes. They had small eyes. I know it because they never stopped telling us. I felt blessed and gifted. I was going to get married to an equally beautiful man and people would love me because I had fair skin.
Back home, we had two neighbours who were from the same country but one was fairer than the other and they constantly fought about this.
My dark-skinned friend noticed all the perfumes on my table and said ‘I don't have this many perfumes. My mom likes to buy fairness creams because she wants to fix my face’
The beautician at the salon said "Aaj iss kallo maasi ko gora bana doongi" (today I'll turn this dark-skinned woman into a fair-skinned woman)
The matchmaker told my grandmother that her son was too dark and it was a blessing that he was able to get married at all.
The Pakistanis in my area told us that the dark Saudis were aggressive and will hurt us. They told us that the "Kaala saudi" (dark Saudi) will come and get us if we don't sleep.
For years, we kept comparing our skin tones. But one day, I met someone with a fairer skin tone and I couldn't help but feel jealous and insecure.
Thankfully, my sister was wiser than me and enlightened me about colourism and it's relation to post-colonialism.
I have come far enough to know how problematic my past was. However, some part of this ridiculously unrealistic beauty standard still lingers in my subconscious. To break that standard, I remind myself that my skin is not a dust rag that will spoil when exposed to dust. My big nose serves an important function that helps me breathe, not an accessory to beautify my face.
While the tides were in my favor, I was steered away from the sea of negativity. Nevertheless, to build a functional, progressive and unprejudiced society, one should always strive to educate those who cling to outdated concepts and hinder the esteem and confidence of our people by forcing them to fixate on less progressive ideals that do not benefit anyone.
These concerns lead to just one consequence. They make us stray from what's important. The intellectual formation of a five-year-old doesn't start with the colour of their skin or the size of their body. It starts with their mind, their intellect, and the establishment of their morals and values.
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