Toxic Society: Brown Girl Edition
Credits: Ghania Ali
According to our society brown girls cannot be brown. The extra melanin stings the society aunties try to enforce their unsolicited advice on using fairness creams and getting whitening treatments done; courtesy of the colonist mind set that they continue to nurture. Instead of focusing on fair skin, if society emphasised on fair treatment of brown girls, they’ll be prettier and safer.
Prettier? Yes, prettier because they’ll be free from the chains of the ‘gora complex’ and truly embrace themselves and exude confidence which is the only recipe for being pretty.
Next stop, a brown girl’s weight. You are either fat or skinny and either way you are shunned. If you are skinny, they’ll tell you to eat more and forcefully stuff food inside your mouth in social gatherings. If you are a big girl then according to them you are not marriage material, so you better be skinny. And if you are neither skinny nor fat, they will still try to fit you on either of the poles, because there is no such thing as moderation in a desi society.
Autonomy is an endangered species that is not found in most desi girls’ households. You may be old enough to get married in their view, but you can never be old enough to take your own decisions. Travelling alone? Beta, after marriage. Education abroad? Beta, after marriage. Live? Beta, after marriage.
We educate brown girls to either be doctors or engineers and if they are unable to secure a “professional degree” of the sort, then off to married life. Bachelor’s in arts or any degree of the like is merely a hobby according to them.
And once you’re married, the forbidden and unspeakable topic in every household becomes an essential discussion at every social gathering: a woman’s sexuality (oops I said it). Every girl is asked “Beta, when is the good news?” Those who told the brown girls that they would get to live their lives after marriage once again try to micromanage the girls’ lives.
From an early age, girls are brought up to please their in-laws. Girls should know how to cook and clean, otherwise their in-laws would not let them breathe. Anything a brown girl does or plans to do is met by the rishtedars two cents, who if not successful in manipulating a brown girl’s parents’ minds would resort to pressurising them to raise their daughter according to their liking.
What she wears is not about self-expression for a brown girl but about “log kya kahen gay?” And no matter what you wear once you step out of the house, the male gaze would follow. You will consider yourself lucky if that’s all that follows you, because we all know it could be worse. Every girl is a minute away from becoming a headline and this fear prevents most parents from letting their daughters go out. And why is this? Because in attempting to guard our daughters we forgot to educate our sons on how to respectfully treat a woman.