Zara Abid, one of the top ten faces in the fashion industry with tons of top notch shoots with the best designers are under her name. Zara is one of the most talented models with immense screen beauty. Recently she did a photo shoot for Nabila’s which became the subject of controversy as it was accused of shamming dark skin color and became a target of cultural misappropriation and racism.
The photo shoot was no doubt very creative and eye-catching ranging from hues of white and silver to pops of orange paired with bold electric blue and deep smoky eye and heavy gold jewels to compliment the look. But it seemed as if the model’s skin tone was darkened to multiple tones as compared to her own skin tone. Social media is a platform where anything different or against the mindset of any particular group of people changes into either a controversy or into an internet cold war. Somewhat same happened with Zara Abid too! Majority of the people criticized that rather darkening her skin tone it would have been better to shoot someone with the same tone of complexion rather darkening Zara’s complexion.
People on the internet started accusing her of color-shaming the dark skin tone in her shoot and Zara and her makeup artist had to face a lot backlash on the shoot. Some came up with the view that she is portraying the dark skin tone girl which she is not and some has issues with posting a very bold shoot.
With all this getting hype, Zara took on the social media to clarify her part. She said that yes her skin was darkened for the shoot but not to a great extent as she herself has a very dark complexion- which she is proud of and the her intention was not to color-shame the dark complexion but was too empower women out there who struggle with a lot of discrimination because of their complexion. She only wanted to show people that women with dark complexion can look beautiful equally as the ones with a fair complexion and dark skin tone girls can achieve all what women with other skin tones can. Zara even complained that she was not given any shoots in the start of her career and then later was given a lighter complexion for the shoots which she did not feel good about and now as she has made a mark in the industry she wants to raise voice on skin color discrimination and want every other women to own her complexion with dignity and be proud of it!
Furthermore, her stylist, Tabesh Khoja took on instagram to support, Zara saying that she is a stunning dark skin model for which is utterly unapologetic. He said people would be happy if we would have lightened her skin tone and are ignoring her natural skin tone. He said the shoot is not a representation of any particular culture and it is high time that we should appreciate dark skinned beauties and stop bullying and colour-shaming.
We completely believe that every skin tone is beautiful in its own way and yes it’s high time that we should appreciate people as they are; as this is the only way we can empower each other by accepting what God has given us and being thankful for it!
