Our society has had an everlasting obsession with beauty standards and look for demeaning ways to remind women that they aren’t beautiful or worthy of love if they do not meet them. Colorism is a common part of this since we treat having kalaa rang like a disease that needs to be immediately cured. “You’re so dark you won’t find a good proposal”, “She needs fairness creams so she doesn’t get bullied by others” these are words women have constantly reminded since their childhood that prove to them that their beauty is what makes them acceptable in the eyes of others. Twitter users re-called these awful words as they began a discussion on beauty standards and how color shaming plays an active role within our society, with how much women are ridiculed and subjected to all sorts of ridiculous experimentation because they weren’t born with fair skin.
The person who started this discussion revealed that as a child, she had been subjected to humiliation at the hands of her family members because of her dark skin and was pressurized to get skin whitening injections
At 17 my family collectively decided I wasn’t fair enough and made me get these “brightening” injections, they had a lasting impact on my soul and to date I question if I will ever be good enough? My family can’t accept me for me baki koi toh door ki baat hai
— aleena the baker (@Aleeennss) September 25, 2021
It soon prompted other users to share their experience of being color shamed by family members or other people. This person recalled how she was told her marriage to a good family will not happen because no one will marry a woman who has dark skin
At one point I have been through this too for my skin being dark. I was told by one of my relatives to use whitening creams to look better “warna rishte nae ate, larkon ko sirf goori larkiya pasand ati hain” lmaooooo https://t.co/2FgUR5zFNL
— M. (@HoomanHumorless) September 27, 2021
From a young age we drill it into the minds of young girls that their worth solely rests on their beauty, not their intelligence or their kindness or empathy. We tell them to re-model themselves in accordance to how their in-laws might find them attractive: their body weight, education, career etc. All of these messages remind women that their individuality and independence doesn’t matter at all, and even breeds insecurity in them which pushes them to harmful ways to ensure they are worthy of society’s acceptance. Like this woman re-called how consistently using fairness creams since she was thirteen years old damaged her skin badly which caused her to be bullied by her class mates in middle school
I used like skin whitening face washes like ponds. I was like 13? I ended up getting a skin condition on my face where I had these white patches on my skin that only made me more insecure about my skin color after being bullied for it throughout middle school.
— Anxious Aunty (@EmaneFatima1) September 26, 2021
Colorism is a deadly epidemic that we need to end in our culture because a woman’s worth never comes from her skin color or her body weight, it comes from her personality. Let’s stop holding marriage and having babies on such an important pedestal that it is the sole defining moment of a woman’s life, and let’s start encouraging women to be independent and live their lives the way they choose to do so!
