chandrakari:This is picture of me and my love that I drew for his 22nd birthday. He isn’t Malayali b
chandrakari:This is picture of me and my love that I drew for his 22nd birthday. He isn’t Malayali but actually a member of the Indo-Trini Canadian diaspora (who to everyone’s shock except for his, has parents who come from Muslim and Hindu families). As you can see from the picture, he is as dark as I am. And yet, our experiences with our dark skins greatly differs as he was born in Canada, while I came to Canada when I was young, I was born in North India. Oh and let’s not forget to mention that gender is definitely a component to this difference as well. My experiences as a child in India was not pleasant to say it in the least. Every morning on the rickshaw ride to primary school, two older girls would tell my friend to not be friends with me because “my skin was dirty”. In bollywood films I was glad that Kajol existed because she was literally the darkest bollywood actress there was. At the times I think I was very similar to her shade (my skin changes colour as I aged believe it or not) and honestly felt that someone as dark as me can be pretty. Even malluwood does this!!! Beauty is another gendered aspect to this. While there are dark skin actors (though admittedly not as many as fair skinned ones), their female counterparts’ beauty = how fair they were.I always feel irked when I see modern Indian fashion spreads when they use dark skin people as props to the fair skinned model posing. I keep saying this over and over again, but I think it is important to repeat: images are powerful. My aim in my art is to create imagery that I wished I saw as a child in art. I wished I saw two dark skinned people falling in love so that my sister wouldn’t comment “but you guys look related” (as if I was supposed to be in a relationship with someone lighter so my future children could be lighter). I wish I saw more dark skinned heroines and models to stop those ignorant children in my childhood from calling my skin dirty or any other poor dark skin desi girl’s skin dirty. Representation matters!!!!! -- source link