Beauty standards for women are baked into our marrow as a society; my child’s connection to her body is a relationship my wife and I pay close attention to
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I grew up in Memphis, Tennessee, as the daughter of Indian immigrants – my father was dark-skinned and my mother was light-skinned. I was often asked: “Are you mixed?” My questioners seemed to assume an affirmative answer – surely I had to be the product of a black father and a white mother, a combination of the two known variables in Memphis. The insistent tone of these inquiries made me acutely aware at a young age of our human impulse to categorize and contextualize.
My mother has had her own experiences of being treated like a living puzzle, of strangers approaching her with a sense of entitlement, as if she owes them an accounting of her identity. People like to guess her ethnicity – she has been presumed Chinese, Japanese, Italian, Greek, Russian, Mexican, Native American and Caucasian. But actually she was born in Kashmir, India. Her complexion is, to quote the name of a famous Indian brand of skin-lightening products, “fair & lovely”.
Continue reading...from The Guardian http://bit.ly/2Iw5LDH
