Jessica Samiha
Meet Jessica. She is a future biology major, pun creator and passionate KPOP listener. As a senior in high school, just beginning to step her toes into the world of adulthood, she knows just how confusing life can get. All of the messages about who to be, how to be it and constantly being asked to change is nothing new. As she begins a new chapter in her life, she reflects on her experiences as a lighter skinned Bengali American and how that has shaped who she is.
Are You My Mother?
My mom always tells me stories about how I was extremely pale as a baby. Whenever we would go out as a family, people would ask her if I was really her child because of the difference in our skin color. How crazy is that? I also remember as a child, my older brother and I would get into fights where I would end up crying, and my parents would try to make me feel better by saying things like “you’re our good child. Your brother is dark skinned. He’s an ugly person with an ugly personality. Don’t think about what he says”. I just think that is so wrong to portray an idea about skin color to children. Family is a big influence on beauty. Although I may have different ideas of what I think beauty is today, I feel like my family might have influenced the idea that light skin is pretty and dark skin is not.
Accepted
All around the world, it seems that lighter skin is favored more than darker skin. I think people of light to medium skin tone have an easier process of being ‘accepted’ in society, which kind of makes me feel that I have lucked out. If you think about all the makeup out in the world, there are endless amounts of makeup that are suitable for lighter skin tones. Darker skin tones have a more difficult time finding the perfect shade of foundation, or eyeshadow palette, or even lipstick shades. It’s completely unfair. We should all be able to find products that work for our skin tones.
Bangla TV
Bengali culture has a huge obsession with light skin. I was watching an advertisement on a Bangla channel and it was basically a girl complaining about how she couldn’t get anywhere in life socially, romantically, work wise because of her ‘darker’ skin color. She wasn’t even that dark to begin with. Then, she lightened her skin through a surgical skin lightening procedure and she said everything is going perfectly for her. She said things like “having lighter skin color helped me graduate, get my dream job, find a perfect man, etc. This really upset me because your skin color shouldn’t be a factor in you achieving your dreams.
