NRI calls out skin-colour shaming in India

Brut India

“I say, f**k the aunties.” This 25-year-old was just chilling at her grandma’s birthday party until some women started judging her skin colour right in front of her.

Transcript

00:00My nose is beautiful, but this color is a little...

00:30My immediate family was there, but there was also a bunch of people who, to me, are pretty much randos.

00:35But they claim to be, in some way, distantly related to me.

00:46So, of course, I was being polite and saying hello to everyone, and these ladies come up to me.

00:50They're definitely, like, my grandma's age, older, and there's a group of, like, six of them.

00:55And they say, oh, is that you, Karishma? We haven't seen you in, like, ten years.

00:59And I have no idea who they are, but I'm obviously going to be polite, so I was like, oh, it's nice to see you.

01:03And they say, this is what they say in Hindi.

01:05My nose is beautiful, but this color is a little...

01:08And Hindi is my first language, so I 100% understand what these women are saying.

01:12In English, that means, she has nice features, but her color is a little...

01:16And they're commenting on my body and my skin color to each other, as if I'm not even standing there.

01:21And, you know, I was shocked, but this is so normal in India, for people to comment on your body right in front of you.

01:29And it be your own people.

01:44It's women, and some of these women are just as dark or darker than me.

01:48How much do you have to hate yourself to say that about somebody else?

02:03And at the same party, on a separate occasion, another group of these kind of rando people that claim to be related to me...

02:09Again, they say, we haven't seen you in years.

02:12And they say...

02:14Now, in English, what this means is...

02:16She doesn't look bad now, but when she was younger, she was kind of hard to look at.

02:20For context, when I was younger, my front two teeth would stick out.

02:24And I couldn't wear contacts, so I had really thick glasses.

02:27But I was just as dark as this.

02:29And I do wonder what kind of person you have to be to say that about a 10-year-old girl.

02:33Colorism is so deeply entrenched here that people feel okay saying that to your face,

02:37as if they're telling you that you have something stuck in your teeth.

02:39Years ago, this probably would have bothered me.

02:41And I really did want to cuss these ladies out, but I kind of just took a step away.

02:45I stepped outside just to take a breath, and I didn't want to make the whole kind of party about me,

02:49because it was about my grandma celebrating her 80th.

02:51But if there's any other brown girls out there that are insecure about their skin color,

02:55anyone telling you that you are not enough or that you're not beautiful really just hates themselves.

03:00So, to that I say...

03:04You do you, girl in the sun.

03:06You do you, girl in the sun.

03:08Wear white, because they're just projecting.

03:11And I wish little Karishma knew this, but you're kind of perfect just the way you are.

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