Hi everyone! Today's post is a poem by Shanzé Raza, a Desi teen born in Canada, Mississauga, and raised all over Ontario. She writes about her experience with colorism, skin bleaching, and fairness creams.
I was told to befriend fair and lovely creams. Told that bleaching my skin, only then would I win. Happiness? No. Health? Pff. But perhaps status, maybe respect, because only if I achieve fair skin can I truly fit in Get white, Get the guy. Scrub harder, you'll get the job. White face wash, bright body cleaner, fairness creams because I need to get clean. This brown skin has me drowning. In the process of making friends with these brightening masks. I make enemies with my mind. Petrifying myself with questions like “Did my skin get darker because of the sun”? We don't want that we don't want people rejecting me like that aunty's son. I should be watching Netflix and reading Twitter posts instead, I am reading what can get rid of these dark tones. My worth should not be my complexion. The scale that measures how light I am. I should be making history not be another girl who got caught up in this trickery. This brown skin had me drowning- I was lost but these fairness creams found me. -Shanzé Raza