Iffat Nawaz
 

A few years after surviving his teens in 1976 my father had married a teenager who was 19 years of age, 5 feet 1 inch, and had features sharper than an average Bengali girl but a skin tone darker than the average "good-looking" Bengali woman. The definition of "good-looking" in Bengali terms that is, "fair and lovely," maybe accompanied with puffy cheeks and dull features, but definitely with a light skin tone, a light skin-tone which balances out all negative aesthetic qualities and associates the word lovely to make our minds bound to believe fair is lovely and all other below fair are therefore lesser beauties.

The 19-year-old dusky beauty felt very much out of place at her new in-laws house regarding the skin-deep issue. There everyone had the polished-fair-skin-tone, the women-in-laws of her wore colors to make them glow, yellow, orange and hot pink, the colors almost forbidden for darker girls, as apparently colors of such make a dark girl look even darker and therefore dimmer.

The 19-year-old bride at 21 became my mother. Secretly disappointing many I wasn't born with the trademark pale-fair-skin-tone of my father's side of the family. I was neither dark nor fair, somewhere in the middle I guess to keep all semi-satisfied.

My grandmother use to rub a paste of turmeric and orange peels all over my body before I would take my bath with the hope that I might just get a few tones lighter. It didn't work…though I did start looking pale by not getting enough exposure of the sun (I was told over and over again to not be under direct sunlight as I was already not so fair), God forbid what if I got sun-burnt and actually got a few shades darker, what would happen to me then?

During my years in Bangladesh, at school, at home, and even on television the issue of fair shades came up over and over again. Fair women trying to be fairer and dark women trying to be lighter; I don't blame them. Being fair in our society does carry a certain status the invisible color codes that we go by is quite a crucial one…

After I shifted to USA, for a while I almost forgot about the complexion complexes among Bengalis. Just to make up for my sun-deprivation I soaked myself in sun every chance I got, went to summer camps where we spent days under the scorching sun, to a point when my skin had turned red. My mother never protested, being a victim of color-inequality I guess she wanted me to be out of the shaded boundary, she wanted me to be liberated…

So I was liberated until again when without knowing I bumped into the shaded walls of Bengali minds. I think it was another one of those Bengali gatherings, when a women taking pride at her straight forwardness told me "Nitu Kalo hoye gecho," basically telling me I have become darker, she had that smile in one corner of her mouth, the smile that pities and mocks at the same time, so I gave her some smart answer like "wow really? Thanks, I really have been trying to get a bit tan this summer" and quickly moved from the vicinity thinking living in a country with countless shades of skin tones and countless racial mixing, how can we still hold on to the "fair and lovely" values?

20-some-years have passed since I was born, 40-some-years have passed since my Mother was born, I know and see that we Bengalis have come far, far enough to incorporate jeans with kurtas, get shorter trendier hair cuts and accept facial hairs need to be waxed and finding refuge to do such beauty regimes at beauty parlors. The same beauty parlors where one can also get a fair-polish, bleaching one's skin to be of a lighter-tone, a bleached unhealthy deteriorated skin, what a symbol of beauty…

My Grand mother who lived through most of her life with the bias towards lighter-skin-tones, (at weddings she would check the brides arms not her face to see of what shade the bride really was. She knew the face would be made up with powdery make-up, poor woman!!! Only if she knew now days the hands and arms are also painted white of brides to give equality between faces and arms) stood away from her belief on fair equals beautiful in the later part of her life. Living with my Mother for teen-some years she realized true beauty doesn't depend on a person's complexion, she finally saw through the dark skin of my mother and realized how striking her daughter-in-law's features were.

My Grandmother was born in 1920 something; I forgive her backwardness and biases, even she overcame these dark mental blocks and shaded hurdles. Sadly some of us still haven't accomplished what she could; we still have skin-polishing and bleaching creams gladly in business. The Bengali media still keeps the fair Bengali face as a front not exposing olive-toned beauties as a face of the Bengali media, Bengali women still hold a grudge against the rays of sun touching their brown or pale bodies... For the sake of all Bengali women demanding our right to soak in sunlight and seeking the end of complexion complexes and shaded discrimination, signing off, I the not so fair Bengali girl…

Please Note: This article was first published at The Daily Star