I remember dodging the sun as we played hide-and-seek in the back garden after school. Darting between the trees alongside my friends, our crisp white uniforms glistening under Colombo’s scorching hot rays, I found myself constantly running towards the shade as we played. First unconsciously, then very consciously, I raced against the sun – a secret, new obstacle that had emerged in the game. My friends teased me when they caught on, but I persisted. With what was surely expert precision, I skipped amongst the shadows of the overhanging branches as they gently moved with the wind and avoided the open field where my friends stood jeering. After all, I had to. It was sports meet season in school, where everyone returned home three shades darker in the evenings after spending hours in the burning heat practising their sprints, throws, and relays to prepare for the big event.
The day before, achchi had told me I had gotten darker with a disapproving, almost alarmed look in her eyes and it was eating away at my sense of self. My grandmother was always particularly direct, but this kind of comment was not unusual; I knew very well that I was my mother’s sudu duwa (fair daughter). Growing up, such terms of endearment were casually thrown around with little care for their literal meaning: sudu duwa can you come down for lunch? Yet, the numerous compliments I had received – or heard my parents receive on my behalf – for my supposedly fair appearance had not escaped me. Although I could not quite decipher why everyone, from our relatives to random strangers that my dad introduced me to at parties, seemed so invested in my skin tone, it occurred to me that something about it made me beautiful; it made me worthy of looking at.
At the time, companies like Fair & Lovely (now rebranded as Glow & Lovely) were openly marketing “whitening” products to young women across Asia. As the advertisements rolled by between segments of our family’s favourite teledrama, I wondered if the many brown-skinned women I saw on a daily basis could not afford to purchase products like that, or if they simply did not care enough about their appearance to try and be seen as beautiful. My friends partook in these preoccupations with skin tone and appearances too, as I was hardly the fairest girl in school. We joked about it and placed our arms next to each other in class, comparing different shades of brown. Sometimes our inspections went beyond skin tone, noting varying levels of hairiness, moles, scars, and other imperfections. People sometimes said I looked like a foreigner, or that I must have been adopted and – though it made me feel othered – I knew it was meant as something adjacent to a compliment. In the end, I supposed avoiding unnecessary sun-exposure was the least I could do to maintain my complexion.
Over time, I attempted to piece together what made you beautiful as a woman, at least within Sri Lanka. This ideal comprised thick, long, and dark hair (but only on your head), fair and even skin free of any dark spots, and a consistently slim but elusive physique, which I assumed one only attained when a relative didn’t comment on how “thin” or “fat” you had gotten since they last saw you. I recognized that women who did not try to reach this standard were less desirable: those who did not shave their legs, wax their upper lips, keep their figures slim, or otherwise attempt to conform. Those who tried too hard or concerned themselves too much, however, were shallow, or even worse – promiscuous. Why would you wear a crop top or a short skirt if you were not begging for attention? Surely, I was asking for it when unknown men on the street called after me as I walked past; perhaps I had to be thankful for their crude affirmations of my attractiveness, for providing certainty that, to them, I was desirable.
Despite my apparent advantage in skin tone, toeing the line of being carelessly, effortlessly beautiful was difficult. My brother was in a different school and I wondered if he experienced the same things, worried about the same things. Now, I know that he did not. Learning from observation, it was clear that men were not held to the same standards, yet they often reinforced them on women. Once, a boy I knew took a picture of me and said “it would have been pretty if your arms weren’t so hairy”. I tried my best not to think about it too much. The next day, I shaved my arms.
After years of studying how to be beautiful in Colombo, I moved to Amsterdam for my bachelor’s. Then, whether I liked it or not, it was clear that I was Brown. It was confusing to be confronted so clearly by an identity I was raised to escape. In the Netherlands, I am occasionally the only South Asian in the room. Now, I was othered regardless of my alleged fairness and it occurred to me how little it all mattered; I was no longer beautiful by the standards I had learned. What was it all for? I thought about the ubiquity of the male gaze, and how scary it was to be seeing myself through the eyes of a man. Did I now have to see myself through the eyes of a white man? I thought about how much I had changed about myself to be beautiful, and how much I would still be willing to do.
As I tried to find my place among the melting pot of newfound strangers, some approached me with curious looks and asked me where I was from. Once, at a party in a small town, a group of inquisitive faces surrounded me, bursting with queries and compliments about my apparent exoticness. One of them touched my hand and said “you are so beautiful, because your skin is brown”. Another reached for my hair. Though I thanked them, I felt uneasy and turned to the one Dutch girl that had accompanied me, quietly realizing, again, that I was the only South Asian in the room. As I searched her eyes for reassurance, she laughed and amusedly commented on how she hadn’t gotten any compliments yet. Surely, I was asking for it, because I was in the room. I used to get messages online likening my skin to some kind of chocolate, or demanding a taste of some spicy curry. Perhaps I had to be thankful for their crude affirmations of my attractiveness, for providing certainty that, to them, I was desirable – to them, I was brown enough.
In Amsterdam, the skies are dark and cloudy, and the rain is nearly constant. Now, I yearn for the scarce sensation of raw heat on my skin, the kind of feeling I can only conjure in the fleeting summer days or by sitting with the heater on and facing a bright window to convince myself it’s coming from outside. Now, I often clasp my hands around hot mugs and burning candles, craving the kind of warmth that marked my body, as if staking a claim. Now, I muse about the time when I would try to hide from the sun, and wonder if this is karma. On particularly cold days, I find myself chasing patches of sunlight on the streets. Once I find one, I stand there for a long time and close my eyes.
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