It’s sad to see how people compare the beauty of a person with the colour of their skin. Dark-skinned people still get tips and tricks on how to turn their skin light. Fairness cream ads try to convince people that fair is the only lovely and a dusky person can achieve easily if they use a fairness cream. So just imagine how insecure a person can get after hearing comments or pieces of advice about their skin colour every day.
Well, the same happened to this Mumbaikar. Sharing her experience with Facebook page Humans of Bombay, she wrote,
“I always wanted to look like my mom growing up–she was fair, while my dad was dark. Even while we were living in the US, my mom would put haldi on my face to make my skin look lighter. I grew up feeling like there was a physical impurity in me — like I wasn’t washing my face enough.”
She talks about her formative years when she lost her confidence because of the skin care.
“In school — I gave up looking good and settled with feeling invisible. When we had to perform in a skit of Radha and Krishna — it was automatically assumed that I would be Krishna, and I couldn’t help but think that it was because of my skin.”
When she saw a few films, she got even more depressed. In movies, usually fair women get high-class roles, and the ones with dark skin were mostly placed as extras. “I was young and naive and believed that I was lower because of how I looked,” she added.
And things escalated after her boyfriend broke up with her.
“I was depressed and had completely hit rock bottom. I started cutting myself and hiding from everyone. I don’t think anyone expected that from me — because outwardly, I was considered a very witty person.”
But that gave her unimaginable strength and she decided to stop the self-pity and just get a hold of her life. “Each morning, I made a conscious effort to tell myself that I didn’t need to rely on anyone to make me feel good or beautiful — it had to come from me. I confided in my mom and together, we tackled the problem head on,” she wrote further.
This was the turning point in her life, where she started loving herself, regained control of her life, her confidence and her happiness.
“I started a new chapter when I began college — I met with people who admired me for who I was and how confidently I carried myself. I let go of the thought that the dark cannot be beautiful. I felt like I could look however I wanted to and I didn’t have to justify my skin tone — I finally felt like I was ‘enough’. I got a tattoo of my parent’s birthdays over my scars to remind me that there were people who loved me for who I was. This is me, unfair and lovely — and I feel pretty damn good about it!”
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