August 5, 2013

Colour Me Bright Red, Emerald Green, Orange, and Pink

By Sudha Menon | A Dark is Beautiful Campaigner

If you have grown up in a dark brown skin, like I have, you have possible heard this sentence many times in your life: " She is dark but smart", " She is not dark, just dusky. And, very intelligent". "She is nice. A little dark, but nice..."

I grew up in an age when being dark was a horrible fate. Being dark meant either being noticed because of your dark colour or worse still, ignored or neglected to such a point that you begin to feel you don't exist. That people can't see you.

 Growing up, I remember the best years of my childhood were spent in clothes that were shades of either grey or brown so that I felt I was a mouse that disappeared into the background. Dark people could not carry reds, blues and greens was the thought back then but every time loving family members brought me yet another grey or brown dress for my birthday, my heart broke a little more.

If you look at photographs from my childhood you can spot me immediately. I am the girl in the corner of the frame, angry eyes staring down the photographer, almost willing him to make me look lovely, despite the drabness of my clothes.  In many ways , I think the colourlessness of my clothes made affected my personality for a long time. I was a shy kid with few friends and I became a rebel to boot, possibly to get some attention for myself. 


My parents and siblings never made me feel I was any lesser. My father, in fact, would proudly say I was his prettiest baby but  the community around reminded me of the colour of my skin at every opportunity, not by talking about it but in subtler ways that hurt way more than that....

I never did know how to verbalize my hurt back then but my heart yearned to wear bright red, emerald green, orange and pink.  It is possibly a hangover from my childhood that my cupboard is now full of these colours:-) 

I celebrate colour and revel in wearing every hue of the rainbow. 

Somewhere along the way I learnt also to look at life in a more cheerful way. Maybe it was because I felt so much on the fringes of life, side-lined and neglected, that I have grown up to be a person with empathy and compassion and a sensitivity towards the differentness of people. I seek out diversity in life and have made it my mission to celebrate that in every manner possible.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Sudha Menon is a long-time journalist and author of best-selling non-fiction books, Leading Ladies; Women Who Inspire India and the recently launched Legacy-letters to their daughters from eminent men and women. After a childhood where she fought with the demons of self-doubt and a deep-rooted complex about the colour of her skin, she says she found her calling in becoming a "chronicler of people's lives."

9 comments:

  1. I totally understand what you would have been through. People used to assign specific dress color as per the skin tone and such differentiation used to crack me up.

    I am glad you wrote about this Maam.

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  2. I totally agree with you about colours. I feel like dark skinned beauties can carry off more colours than their lighter skin counterparts. I love wearing bright, jewel toned clothes and feel like dark skin should be celebrated by not letting it hide in a corner.

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  3. Nice piece Sudha,

    Rather we don't need other colors to make us feel high or better. Dark is always beautiful and better.

    Categorization and preferring people on the skin colors is the by product of sick minds. We can never categorize people on skin color or rather on their body features.

    The substance lies in the grey matter on the upper part of body. In case dark would have been the bad and Unrich people from Mahatma Gandhi to nelson Mandela and Obama would not have existed.

    Males not have been oozing out after seeing Tyra Bank, Naomi Campbell, Beyonce, Jlo or Shakeera.

    The world is full of herd of labs they just keep on saying what masses say and they may have have rather have different thoughts in heart and mind.

    Its take s lot of gut to accept what you feel and be raw and Real.

    Good piece.

    Dilip

    Visit me: www.facebook.com/therisingyoung or dilipyadav80@gmail.com

    we need people like you.

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  4. What a wonderful piece! A story that resonates with so many of us. I quite liked 'Leading Ladies' but this is a story I liked more because of the message it carries. I wear plenty of bright colours too now, more or less because of this reason!

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  5. if only i had a penny for everytime someone said i am not meant to wear bright colours because i am dark, i would be a millionaire by now.

    i am posting this comment wearing the hottest pink tee shirt that you'll ever find..:)

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  6. I am going to post a link to this blog on my blog at twisteddnainspiredme.wordpress.com. I really couldn't agree with Ms.Menon more!

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  7. Really gud to read such articles.......its very much true dat brown people hv to go through kind of comments like..'she is dark..BUT....'.......
    there is always a but....its such a deep routed mentality that it will take time to go from people's mind....
    n wen it comes to carry colors..its your confidence n attitude dat matters...........

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  8. Really gud to read such articles.......its very much true dat brown people hv to go through kind of comments like..'she is dark..BUT....'.......
    there is always a but....its such a deep routed mentality that it will take time to go from people's mind....
    n wen it comes to carry colors..its your confidence n attitude dat matters...........

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  9. Its surprising that u faced such discrimination. u are not dark at all. ur skin colour is d average skin colour all over India.
    in fact i can really understand how u felt. I am from Assam where majority of the girls are fair and i was always called dusky. but when I went to Pune , i was surprised when my friends considered me fair. I think fairness is just relative. and real beauty lies inside u and not in ur skin colour. even if we are to cnsider superficial beauty, it should be the health and fitness of body and skin not clour
    But sadly, India has a long way to go

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