After many years of being bullied and facing racism, I’m glad there’s starting to be some hype around our south Asian culture and traditions but (unfortunately, there’s always a “but” in these kinds of situation) there’s still so much more to do and we’re far from being done.
Let’s start out with something “light-hearted”- the media. For me, the people who stick out to me the most that represented the “desi” community are Kelly from The Office, Ravi from Jessie and Lilly Singh. Kelly craved the attention from mainly white men. Ravi was the weird kid with a really thick accent that had a giant lizard in his room and the only thing that he had going for him was his brain. Both of these characters exclude a lot (if not, all) of us. The characters of Ravi and Kelly are pretty one dimensional and have no real depth to their characters. They were only ever really used as a tool for comedic purposes and to point out how weird and different we are. Where is the successful, self-reliant Asian community at? Why are we so often seen running corner shops on TV screens when we run so many other types of businesses? A lot needs to change here.
Lilly Singh from YouTube was one of the first brown people that I actually resonated with, initially. She made funny skits and is a feminist. She was one of the highest-paid YouTubers and came out as bisexual. As well as being the first woman of colour to get her own late-night talk show, which is one heck of an achievement. Lilly was out and successful. Completely different from what people had previously shown on the media. But her comedy soon became less and less inclusive. In my opinion, she faded from the very thing that made her famous, being relatable and funny, to the point where she needed a laugh track on her own show.
Notice that all of these are Indians. Where are my three main neighbours Sri Lanka, Pakistan and Bangladesh being represented? You guys all do the most and are still underappreciated and heavily dismissed while enduring disgusting slurs against you being normalised in the media.
Jay Shetty is another. He talks about being in touch with your emotions and wellbeing and being empathetic towards others (in particular, taboo subjects), which aren’t often touched upon in our communities, let alone by a guy. A South Asian dude talking about… feelings? You don’t get that very often, but we need more of it in this day and age.
Jay Shetty, is another. He talks about being in touch with your emotions and wellbeing and being empathetic towards others (in particular, taboo subjects), which aren’t often touched upon in our communities, let alone by a guy. A South Asian dude talking about… feelings? You don’t get that very often, but we need more of it in this day and age.
One major issue in South Asian culture is colourism caused by the caste system that is colonialism. Before I dive into the facts and history of this topic, I want to talk about my own experience with this issue. Now on the face of it, there’s a simple equation to this, lighter skin = more power, wealth and beauty. My own family fell under this illusion. I have been told on numerous occasions that my family used to dab milk on my skin (it's said to make the skin complexion lighter) when I was an infant. And they often told me this story to me with pride and I used to take pride in it too because I didn’t know any better. But now I do.
It saddens and angers me that children feel the need to fit in these unrealistic standards.
Every time I’ve visited India to see my family there, there’s always been an ad for skin lighting products. ALWAYS. As far back as my memory takes me. With Bollywood stars flaunting and striding down the “street” (a studio) confidently with their fair skin and people being amazed by them. Yet it's obvious that the studio's lights are blinding and overexposing their skin for the camera. These studio lights promise you to get “fair and lovely skin” and by having fair-skinned actors as the the face of the products helps sales to skyrocket. In fact, those studio lights rake in $400 million dollars every year on people’s insecurities.
Why is it so important being light? Because the media says so. There aren’t many Bollywood actors/actresses that are darker skin tones. If they are, they're often put down by fellow actors and directors and are usually nowhere near as successful as their fairer counterparts. So, since the successful actors are lighter, people, especially younger influential ones, idolise them and think that the route to being successful is being lighter.
Second, dating/marriage. 70% of 300 men and women interviewed said that they wanted their partners to have light skin. No wonder “bleaching syndrome” has become a phenomenon. Unsurprisingly, 90% of women see skin lightening products as a “high need” and will ignore the repercussions of using these creams; such as leading to skin cancer, liver damage and mercury poisoning.
*Disclaimer: this story is very simplified and there’s much more to it.
But where does a caste system and colonialism fit into all of this? Well, let’s go back in time to around 1500 BCE. The caste system was like Divergent. Each group of people had responsibility but, that didn’t mean that their children couldn’t move from one “group” to another. To keep it simple, there were academics, warriors, landowners and labourers/ farmers. There was no hierarchy because they all understood that they needed to do their roles to keep society functioning. However, since humans are power-hungry and greedy a new group was introduced called the “untouchables”, commoners and cleaners. Now, if this doesn’t scream “hierarchy” I don’t know what does. The "untouchables" couldn’t move up this new ladder and were rejected from education and jobs. Consequently, their children were born into this cycle. How does this play into colourism? Well, untouchables and the labourers were always outside working in the sun meaning they were more likely to be of a darker skin tone, which the academics didn’t have to do because they could just stay inside and not do back-breaking labour. Sadly leading to the association that being darker meant being a low-status person.
Fast forward to when colonialism started (as early as 1434 by the Portuguese and ended in 1948, with a few other Europeans courtiers ruling in the middle, like France and of course Britain), citizens associated fairness with power once again. Since Europeans reigned over their own country, they encouraged the idea of being fair meaning more power.
Artwork by @kannanchithralaya on Instagram
Now, I bet you’re thinking, okay but this happened so many years ago. Can’t we move on? Well, that’s what we want to do but, the truth is that there is so much division caused by colonialism and so much rivalry between pretty much every South Asian country. We need to be able to put our differences aside and come together before we can “move on”. Something as trivial as a cricket match is seen as political rather than a sporting event. A shade difference between people's skin tone is a cause for gossip and disgust to this day.
The problems lie within our foundations, we need to fix that before we can start to build atop it.
Today's feature writer is Aishani! I learned so much about South Asian culture and the caste system and I emphasise with the impact that colonialism has had on the way beauty standards have been eurocentricised. As you read in Sophia, Michaela, Kay and Aishani's posts, colourism is very much still alive throughout the whole of Asia and thrives off the skin bleaching industry. However, it is through educating ourselves we can make a step forward to reversing these colonised mentalities and start loving the skin we are born with.
Join Aishani over @platform_blog to interact with her post!
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