The Color of MY SKIN

Being dark, in Pakistan, is above all a major social disadvantage. The concept of beauty here begins and ends at being light-skinned, fair and gori. Yes, that's the ugly truth or rather the real truth as it is - If the west is besotted by Snow-White and Cinderella (both milky white and golden haired) then so are we.





So, if your are not olive-skinned, not wheatish in complexion, and simply not light in color be prepared, to be side lined, errr...your entire life. For dark women, I mean, really dark women, not euphemistically tanned and golden, you are well advised not aspire to getting your hands on anything manly or marital coming your way in this life-time! Men, the Pakistani variety, prefer their wives to be light colored and dim-witted, and if its in that order, then nothing like it! I have heard it repeated so many times - always the same bloody requirement for marriage and prospective wives, and daughters-in law - She must be fair in color!





This fascination with the color white, does it make us into Racists? I suppose so, for aren't we biased towards darker colored women? I being one, that is a woman and on top of it very dark have faced this prejudice a million times over! We just cannot help it, for us beauty starts with being as fair as possible, and away on the color spectrum from the color brown. And, considering 99.9% of the population is dark this condition, I must say is very ambitious. I am not belittling the color prejudice faced by blacks in the west and by our fore-fathers in India under the British. The crude reality is here staring us in the face - when a child is born, irrespective of the sex he or she is wished to be fair and gora. The gori girls have an easy time getting rishtas and marriage proposals and eventually have more men wanting to marry them than their darker counter-parts.





If you are fair then you have won half the battle - hell, no matter what you look like - you are considered beautiful! Why accuse the Europeans and other Aryan races of being racists when we are racists to our fellow citizens all the time. The dark color is associated with the 'lower' menial working class or to put it bluntly to the the bhangis! the christian workers who clean and pick up garbage. There are households still in the beginning of the 21st century who would not allow these people to drink or eat in their glasses and plates - for they are dirty because of the work they do and that is signified in their color! How pathetic are we, that in this age of rocket science and when vistas of other new worlds are opening to us we are still troubled by the color of our and other people's skin.





I am very glad. Simply, for being very dark skinned in this most malicious of places for I can see the very brittleness of people's characters and their mien, the shallowness that comes to surface when they talk of color and skin. Being on the wrong side of the rainbow, I get to see the eccentricities of our people, their absolute fixation on skin tone, and their placement of others in their estimation on some kind of a color coded scale! It is funny, but its also quite stupid and inane.





HMMMMM, I'm past my prime, and I'm certainly not in the marriage market, and hell - all the dark color I'd welcome only if it is to keep the Pakistani men away - So god has been very kind to me and I am thanking him every second of the day - As for you! the fair-skinned damsels good- luck with all the attention!