Activist Shaniera Akram, took to Instagram today, to give an insight into the insecurities related to skin colour. She explained that as a white woman, she was born with fair skin and along with many of her white friends, she wished for darker skin just like Pakistanis wish for a lighter complexion.
“We would go to any length to change the colour of white to brown because that is what was instilled in our minds, that brown was more beautiful,†she wrote.
She further talked about the (harmful) methods she along with her friends resorted to, in order to achieve the desired brown look. This included applying harmful oils and sitting under the sun until burnt to crisp, fake tanning under hazardous lights that ran the risk of skin cancers, skin disease, spots and adding years to faces causing wrinkles and irreversible damage. She added that she also used toxic stains, dyes and body paints every day.
“And I have never tried this but some girls have synthetic hormones injected into their bodies to stimulate the pigment cells that produce melanin and actually change the colour of the skin from white to brown permanently,†she added.
The message she tried to send was that just like our society feels pressured into having white skin in order to be accepted under the “white is superior” mentality white people, who have exactly what our society praises, want what we have. Similar to them, desi people resort to hazardous methods to achieve the white look including skin bleaching, hormone injections, the infamous fairness creams and a lot more. Shaniera sends a message about body positivity with her posts, requesting everyone to be happy in their own skin because what they have is what another person is dying to have.
Read: Shaniera Akram makes daily commute easier for deserving people
“And just remember, to all the girls with brown skin who want white, you are the envy of half the women on this planet, women and girls all over the world that go to any extremes to have your colour skin, so that’s got to be something worth enjoying !!!” she concluded.
https://www.instagram.com/p/B8vcBc0gKVJ/
Let’s hope other people take a page out of Shaniera’s book and implement said positivity in their lives. Girl’s should embrace their skin colour no matter what it is, and focus on what they’ve been blessed with. Moreover, it’s about time that society realizes and stops pressuring young girls into feeling inferior about their skin colour.
