The issue of fairness (in terms of skin color) is really big in South Asian culture. Not that it’s also not big in other cultures.

In India and Pakistan, you can very easily find bleaching creams, filled with all kinds of poison, that are meant to turn your dark skin fair. Dark skin is considered ugly, and fair skin is the ideal. Any auntie trying to marry her eligible son off will sniff her nose at a dark skinned girl. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard things, about other girls and about me, even, along the lines of “She’d be prettier if she weren’t so dark.” Or, “No, not her, I want my son to marry a fair-skinned girl.”

It’s bullshit, but that’s the way it is.

My father happens to be a darker-skinned Pakistani man. My mother is a very fair-skinned Pakistani woman. I, as you can see from my little tiny userpic on your dash, and my picture in my sidebar, am kind of in the middle, but closer to my dad’s coloring. I guess I would be described as “mocha,” even though I don’t really know what the hell that means.

I’ve always had a devil of a time picking foundation - and make up in general. But especially foundation, because that’s the makeup item in which it’s crucial that you get the right match for your skin. Besides, most makeup that you can buy at department stores and drug stores is made for white women with your red undertones, and that makes my skin, with its very golden undertones, look absolutely ashy.

So for the longest time, I just avoided makeup. Didn’t even wear any. At most, I’d wear mascara (black is black!) and lipgloss or lipstick, and that was on the rare days that I remembered, or had to look fancy. And when I say I went the longest time without wearing makeup, I’m referring to … well, even now.

If I’m running to the grocery store, or back when i was in law school last year, or if I’m going out for lunch with friends, I will, at most, wash my face. If I’m going to a dinner party or out to dinner, I will put on mascara and maybe eyeliner, but only if I’m wearing my contacts. And I’ll put on lipstick. (Lipstick doesn’t count - I try to usually wear lipstick or gloss of some sort if I go out.)

I have always had such a hard time finding foundation that made me look … right … that I just decided, fuck it. I’d buy some foundations, thinking I’d gotten it right, I’d put it on, and I’d look terrible. Just ashy and dead and awful. So those got tossed out, and that was the end of that. I just stopped buying them.

My BFF Amanda drove down from MI in early January, and we ended up at the Sephora store. She had mentioned that she wanted to buy makeup, so I dragged her there. We browsed around, and were going to leave when a black saleslady (and yes, her race actually IS pertinent!) asked if we needed help. Normally, I would have shied away - I don’t wear make up, so why bother?

But I asked her to help me pick out foundation. She looked at me and said, “Can I be frank with you?” I said she could. She continued, “Normally, when women of your ethnicity come here, they want to buy make up that makes them look lighter. More fair-skinned. So I have to ask: Do you want to look like you, or do you want to look fair-skinned?”

I might have taken offense if it had been a white woman saying this to me. No, I’m pretty sure I *would* have taken offense, and that I would have embarrassed the hell out of Amanda with a sharp retort. But I think it was because she as a black woman - a WOC just like me - that I didn’t snark back. I imagine that she saw a lot of the same in her own community, with women trying to appear more fair skinned.

I told her I wanted to look like me. She seemed relieved, which in turn made me feel relieved. It was kind of confusing.

Before long she had me seated on a stool and was brushing Tarte Smooth Operator Tinted Moisturizer with Amazonian Clay in #14 over half my face. She wasn’t sure if that was too dark or not, so she selected a lighter shade and brushed that over the other half of my face, and then turned me to a mirror and told me to pick which one I liked better.

She said she liked the #14, the darker one.

Amanda said she liked the #14, the darker one.

The OTHER makeup lady said she liked the #14, the darker one.

And I swear to you guys, staring into that mirror, it took EVERYTHING in me to admit, out loud, that the #14 was the one I wanted.

Because the other one, the #12 or whatever it was, made me look paler. True, I looked terrible. Ashy. Flat. Weird. The #14 complemented my skintone wonderfully. It made me glow. The #12 was matte and made me look like I was ill and grey.

But it made me look lighter than what I actually was.

And I realized that I really, really, really wanted to pick the lighter foundation, because I wanted to be a lighter color than what I was. And when I realized that, I felt sick to my stomach. Because I honestly didn’t realize that the discussion of fairness in our community, which I had always scorned and ridiculed and denounced, much to the irritation of other Desi aunties, affected me that much.

But somewhere along the way I really had internalized it, and I hated myself for it. I repeated #14 as my choice, louder this time, and saw Amanda nod with what *also* looked like relief. And I wondered how I could be so fucking stupid as to blindly go with what made me look paler, even though it made me look duller, less vibrant.

Pretty sickening, huh? The worst part is that I know there are so, so many Desi girls that know exactly what I’m talking about because they’ve felt the same themselves even though they thought for sure they were smarter than that.

TL;DR: Buying foundation sucks and I’m a long-winded idiot.