“How come when my teachers say the flesh colored crayons, they only mean the light ones?”
An honest question I came home with to my parents after a day of the first grade. Even as a little girl, something in me knew that if your skin color was darker, it wasn’t as valued. This debilitating lesson was in a lot of places I looked. It certainly was in all of my favorite television shows and movies. Even in the black-made ones. Even in shows like The Proud Family, which is one I think is safe to say we were all rooting for. Though it beautifully shows a loving black family taking pride in their culture, it still shows how colorism has provided the monstrous power of dividing communities. Margaret Hunger, scholar of race and gender studies defines it as “the process of discrimination that privileges light-skinned people of color over their dark-skinned counterparts” (Hunter 2007).
In Pride and Prejudice: Pervasiveness of Colorism and the Animated Series Proud Family, Catherine Knight Steel jumps into the many colorist narratives in the animated favorite. She points out that the main character Penny, and her mother, Trudy, who are illustrated as having light skin, are “the two characters who have the most depth and with whom the viewer is meant to relate and empathize are clearly signified as African American, but with many Eurocentric features” (Steel 60). On the other hand, as we discuss the Gross sisters, (yes, their names are literally the GROSS sisters) we come into combat with the colorist belief that light-skinned means utmost intelligence while dark skinned means utter incompetence.
The illustrators made it a point to make the Gross sisters skin color their most striking feature – a deep shade of blue. These three antagonists of the show are shown as an extreme. They are angry, poor, ugly, and feared by the other characters. This generalization of people of dark skin as threatening is extremely destructive. Even Penny’s friend Dijonay, who has the darkest skin out of all of their friends, is also the poorest of all of them, often not exerting much intelligence, and is mainly focused on “finding herself a man.” These examples are only a few stereotypes riddled within the cartoon.
The United States tv/film industry is not the only place that wreaks havoc on people with dark skin. Hindi cinema, commonly known as Bollywood (though let it be known that this is a very westernized naming, and it is deemed very disrespectful to call Hindi film, Bollywood. It implies that it is an imitation of Hollywood, and this it is not) has a history of colorism shown within the films. Spanish telenovas, or Latin American soap operas, also exploit this idea of colorism, and it disproportionately applies to women.
In the Tamil film, Baahubali: The Beginning (2015), our male protagonist Shivudu has a romantic moment near a waterfall with his love interest, Avanthinka. When Avanthinka gets washed by the waterfall, it not only washes her of any dirt or grime but seems to be so powerful that it has lightened her skin. Yes, Shivudu loved her before the waterfall cleanse, but now she is portrayed as much more beautiful than before. The desire to achieve light skin in order to achieve true beauty is a huge issue in India. Popular Indian actresses Priyanka Chopra and Kajol have even admitted to using skin bleaching products to achieve lighter skin.
A lot of these narratives of light skin are almost exclusively sold to women. This is especially true when we look at telenovas. The light-skinned, often times blonde, often times white passing actors are the leading women. Dark skinned actors are supporting or minor roles, and are typically playing the help. Interestingly enough, the leading man’s skin tone is always darker than his female counter part.
In her Feminist Review academic article “Colourism and the Politics of Beauty,” Aisha Phoenix notes that “racism and colourism lead to the privilege of light skin, and ‘patriarchal patterns of desire’ mean women are still judged disproportionately on their looks.” A lot of the leading men are even considered dark-skinned, matching the skin tone of the actors portraying the secondary characters or maids. Phoenix also points out that “Heterosexual men of colour often perpetuate colourism by demonstrating it in their choice of partners, or in their descriptions of what they consider attractive in women.” It makes a lot of sense when we see that skin lightening products are almost always exclusively sold to women, and when we look back at our Tamil film, only the female counterpart is the one to be “washed.” This harmful pattern is extremely common.
Not seeing your story reflected back at you in social media can feel incredibly isolating, but when your existence is shamed on top of it all, it adds layers of internalized pain and racism that eats away at you before you even realize what it is or why it exists. We are not just watching these colorist narratives, we are consuming them. It is time we stop acting ignorant to the pain that is shed on dark-skinned individuals, especially young women. Those videos going around of young black girls crying because someone finally told them that their dark skin is beautiful? Heartbreaking. But once you start picking apart the media you consume, how can you act surprised at the pain that must be inside of her? At this point, loving your dark skin is a radical act. So, especially to my dark skin queens, in an act of rebellion and power, I ask you to unapologetically and wholeheartedly love your skin. When you do, I promise that nothing can stop your glow.
References
Steele, Catherine Knight. “Pride and Prejudice: Pervasiveness of Colorism and the Animated Series Proud Family.” Howard Journal of Communications 27.1 (2016): 53-67.
Abatistaschool. “Colorism and the ‘Patriarchal Patterns of Desire’ in Telenovelas.” RTF Gender and Media Culture, 1 July 2019, rtfgenderandmediaculture.wordpress.com/2019/06/29/colorism-and-the-patriarchal-patterns-of-desire-in-telenovelas/.
Lakshmi, Kav. “Colorism in Bollywood and Hollywood.” Brown Girl Magazine, 19 Nov. 2019, www.browngirlmagazine.com/2019/11/colorism-bollywood-hollywood/.
Hunter, M. (2007). The Persistent Problem of Colorism: Skin Tone, Status, and Inequality. Sociology Compass, 1(1), 237-254. doi:10.1111/j.1751-9020.2007.00006.x