“I say, f**k the aunties.” This 25-year-old was just chilling at her grandma’s birthday party until some women started judging her skin colour right in front of her.
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00:00My nose is beautiful, but this color is a little...
00:30My immediate family was there, but there was also a bunch of people who, to me, are pretty much randos.
00:35But they claim to be, in some way, distantly related to me.
00:46So, of course, I was being polite and saying hello to everyone, and these ladies come up to me.
00:50They're definitely, like, my grandma's age, older, and there's a group of, like, six of them.
00:55And they say, oh, is that you, Karishma? We haven't seen you in, like, ten years.
00:59And I have no idea who they are, but I'm obviously going to be polite, so I was like, oh, it's nice to see you.
01:03And they say, this is what they say in Hindi.
01:05My nose is beautiful, but this color is a little...
01:08And Hindi is my first language, so I 100% understand what these women are saying.
01:12In English, that means, she has nice features, but her color is a little...
01:16And they're commenting on my body and my skin color to each other, as if I'm not even standing there.
01:21And, you know, I was shocked, but this is so normal in India, for people to comment on your body right in front of you.
01:29And it be your own people.
01:44It's women, and some of these women are just as dark or darker than me.
01:48How much do you have to hate yourself to say that about somebody else?
02:03And at the same party, on a separate occasion, another group of these kind of rando people that claim to be related to me...
02:09Again, they say, we haven't seen you in years.
02:12And they say...
02:14Now, in English, what this means is...
02:16She doesn't look bad now, but when she was younger, she was kind of hard to look at.
02:20For context, when I was younger, my front two teeth would stick out.
02:24And I couldn't wear contacts, so I had really thick glasses.
02:27But I was just as dark as this.
02:29And I do wonder what kind of person you have to be to say that about a 10-year-old girl.
02:33Colorism is so deeply entrenched here that people feel okay saying that to your face,
02:37as if they're telling you that you have something stuck in your teeth.
02:39Years ago, this probably would have bothered me.
02:41And I really did want to cuss these ladies out, but I kind of just took a step away.
02:45I stepped outside just to take a breath, and I didn't want to make the whole kind of party about me,
02:49because it was about my grandma celebrating her 80th.
02:51But if there's any other brown girls out there that are insecure about their skin color,
02:55anyone telling you that you are not enough or that you're not beautiful really just hates themselves.
03:00So, to that I say...
03:04You do you, girl in the sun.
03:06You do you, girl in the sun.
03:08Wear white, because they're just projecting.
03:11And I wish little Karishma knew this, but you're kind of perfect just the way you are.