Abhi Chinniah

This essay was edited by my friend Soph Chin. The first draft of this essay was all emotion, I had so much I wanted to say! Soph, thank you for helping me organise my many feelings into something readable.

Open scene.

Cue the inspirational music. The fair-skinned, successful woman looks back on her past as a meek, dark-skinned girl living in a kampung. Her mother calls her over and tells her she has talent, but that she needs to work hard to achieve success, and not rely on anyone for her needs. She then looks into a mirror and frowns at her dark skin.

A voiceover, stating ‘’Fulfill your dreams, use the skin lightening cream Fair & Lovely." Subtitles advertise that ‘’it will take only 6 weeks to achieve fair skin’’.

Cut to the present. She’s a successful, light-skinned newscaster and everyone adores her. 

End scene. 

This was only a small fraction of the messaging I grew up with. Colourism was everywhere and yet the word was not a part of my vocabulary for much of my life. If you had asked me at age 15 what “Colourism” meant, I’d have looked at you blankly and asked if it was a type of colour pencil. It was so pervasive that I learned that discrimination based on skin colour was just how the world is. 

Colourism clouded the eyes of the kids and teachers who bullied me at school - because instead of being a meek, dark-skinned girl, I had a different accent and self-assurance. Colourism meant that I rubbed Fair & Lovely cream on my skin. Colourism meant that it was considered normal for my parents to be asked: “Why does your child look so black?”, or for me to be told ''your friend is fair and looks like a movie star,'' and then looking at me ''you...well, you know''. 

No, I didn't know. But I quickly learned.

I took all of these experiences and internalised them as the truth. The opinions, taunts and culture I grew up in taught me that my melanin was bad. That having ‘ethnic’ features was less attractive. That I would be more accepted and more desirable if I, too, was ‘Fair & Lovely’. 

This discrimination against darker skin meant that skin-lightening products were in common use when I grew up. There was a seemingly endless list of products - soaps, cream, makeup and balms - that all promised lighter skin. I remember teachers at school having a bleached appearance after years of using these products. One teacher even developed sores on her face and around her mouth from using skin-lightening creams and makeup. And yet, despite being educators themselves, there was no education on why skin-lightening was so dangerous. No one acknowledged that many of these creams contained potentially toxic levels of chemicals such as mercury and hydroquinone. And even if they had, the societal pressure and prejudice against dark skin was so strong that I suspect many would have still used those same creams regardless. 

In my formative years, the women of colour who peppered pop culture were a much lighter colour than my dark brown skin. They had medium light-coloured skin, sharp nose bridges, hazel or green eyes and narrow-shaped faces with high cheekbones. These personalities were marketed as the ideal to strive for and yet nearly no one around me, or within my social circle looked like any of these people. I remember asking myself if these were what real brown people looked like and comparing myself to them.

This shaped my worldview of how the world worked and this was only reinforced again when I moved back to New Zealand. Although self-tanner and bronzer were the top picks of the early 2000s, no one wanted the natural deep tones of my Jaffna Tamil heritage. Instead, I learned that my melanin showed up and coloured people’s opinions of me before I could even open my mouth to speak. I was insulted through racist microaggressions dressed up as compliments such as “you speak good English”  “You'll look so much better if you wear the right colours” or my personal favourite: “you're attractive…for a brown girl.” 

No one said, ‘’it is okay to just be you.” Even if they had, why would I believe them? I was surrounded by evidence that it was not okay - not okay to be brown, to be dark, to be my true self. Instead, I had to know my place as a darker-skinned woman. To aspire, but not above my station. Work hard, but don't dream too big because the pinnacle of success is reserved for the lighter-skinned upper echelon of society. It took a long journey for me to truly accept that my brown skin is what it is. I cannot change this, and now, I do not want to change. Now, I am enough.

But what is enough for me, is not necessarily enough for everyone else. 

Amongst the struggles my forebears faced including migrating across oceans for a better life, there was no capacity to unpack what these experiences meant. Instead, the overwhelming message was “This is how things are, you have to be okay and get on with it.”Although this was born from a desire to see success in an unfair world, this meant we discounted each other, nitpicked women’s weight, and complexions, whispering in young girls' ears about how dark and overweight they were. If they were too dark-skinned, we questioned their ability to find a suitable husband. In the midst of tearing each other down, we missed spreading an important message: acceptance.

Instead of embracing our melanin, generations of us consumed the idealogy that fairer was better. Colourism weaved its way into our brains and took root. We welcomed Colourism into our communities. We exist with Colourism. We walk hand in hand with it. Colourism embodies and consumes us. Along with the strong drive to succeed, we created a toxic cycle that insisted we throw away our genetic heritage to be attractive, to be loved, to achieve something in our lifetimes. 

Simply telling each other we are good enough won't magically break down entire generations' worth of societally reinforced Colourism on a global scale. But with the broader shift in society towards not just recognising, but celebrating diversity, this is the message we not only need to speak but show through our own actions. And these words hold power. If my younger self had more people telling me - and showing me - that my brown was just as beautiful, I wouldn’t have had as many insecurities about my melanin. 

We can do more. We can build on the changes that we know are coming in society. When we say, ‘’your melanin is beautiful, don’t let anybody tell you otherwise,’ we have to mean it not just in our words but our actions. We can also listen. We can come together, support each other, and unpack our trauma through shared experiences. We can educate, and spread awareness across our communities about how damaging and unnecessary skin-lightening practices are. We can tell our aunties and uncles not only that it is not nice to flippantly comment on the colour of our skin, but show them that the world we want to see is different from the one they grew up in. We can understand that they most likely want the best for us and experienced systemic colourism, and show them the changes we are creating for our future. We can be proud of our melanin and succeed.

When we can do all these things, we’ll create the future that 15-year-old me never even thought was possible. A world where we can go through our entire lifetimes without even thinking negatively about our dark skin. So, dream big and aspire. Because when we have crushed Colourism, we will show generations both old and young the future that we all deserve.

Melanin Rising. Melanin Rising. Melanin Rising 

Love your melanin.