Light versus dark: unwilling to be a victim of the color complex

“O child, your complexion has gotten so dark!” stated an older female friend of my mother’s as… “O child, your complexion has gotten so dark!” stated an older female friend of my mother’s as a look of distaste spread across her face. At 14, I was seeing her for the first time since I had left Bangladesh nine years before.

I wearily looked at my mother for an answer to the archaic greeting I had just received. My mother gave me a quick shake of the head as if to say, ignore it. I forced a smile across my face and made a mental note never to let this woman near my kids.

It was not a personal prejudice toward tanned skin that brought about the negative reaction from my mother’s friend, but rather an ignorant societal prejudice that had been taught to her since birth. In the Indian subcontinent’s culture, the attractiveness of a person is judged by how fair or light skinned their complexion is. Even further then that, people with lighter skin are often considered to have higher status, worth, and are better accepted by society.

So pretty much even if you had been hit by the ugly wheels, the ugly train and the ugly tracks, if you were lucky enough to come out light skinned, a lot of people would want to reproduce with you.

I went back to America and gradually forgot the events of the day, yet it had formed a lasting impression. As I grew older, I noticed it was not only my own culture that was affected by this backwards thinking. The concept of lighter skin color being the better skin color transcended cultural boundaries.

In various parts of Africa, the Caribbean, Japan, and the Philippines skin bleaching creams are the highest selling cosmetic product. Also, most of the role models in these countries are either mixed or just not of the indigenous blood all together.

Thousands of miles away, the skin color complex is also prevalent in the Hispanic culture. This year’s International Festival of New Cinema of the Americas featured a film titled “White Like the Moon,” which tells of a Mexican-American mother who forces her dark-skinned daughter to bleach her skin in order to improve her appearance.

You would think in our own country, which boasts of its forward thinking, such a problem would not exist. Well, you would be wrong.

In the United States, a large part of black culture suffers from intraracial color issues. In the mid-1960s, there were elitist clubs, like Jack and Jill. The application process for Jack and Jill included the “brown-paper bag” test, which consisted of the applicant putting their hand inside a paper bag to see if their skin color was light enough.

The history of intraracial categorizing by skin color has made for the fragile intra-racial tensions between black American women today.

Dark skinned black Americans still feel as if the light skinned concepts of beauty within their culture work to separate and make them feel like an inferior part of their own race.

The old concept of beauty is no longer as blatant as the “brown-paper bag test.” Yet, as I was sitting in my living room watching BET with one of my roommates last week, I made a point to notice the complexions of the black women in the videos. It was more then evident that a high majority of them was light to medium skinned and if they weren’t, then they had bleached their hair blond.

Because of this prehistoric mentality, many darker skinned black women feel hostility toward those who are lighter skinned. I will never forget this particular class I had my sophomore year at Pitt. The first day the teacher asked us to go around in a circle and tell the class a life-changing story that happened to us. Two light skinned black women in the class, barely holding back tears, told parallel stories of how other black women taunted, bullied, and even in one case burned their hair in high school because they were lighter skinned.

I once was a victim of the color complex. There was a point in my life, where I wouldn’t go out into the sun if it was too hot, I would soak my skin in SPF 60. And it’s very hard for me to admit this, but yes, I would buy the lightest shade of powder I could get away with.

This form of self-oppression is no way to live. Ethnic women of the world need to stop striving for a foreign ideal of beauty and start celebrating the exoticness of their own. This standard for beauty is the only one I desire to live up to.

Natasha Khan is proud to be a Revlon No. 8 Toast. She can be reached at natashankhan@yahoo.com.