I undoubtedly stood out in this context – ashy knees in the winter, unruly mane of thick, black hair in a sea of pale midriffs and near-ubiquitous gold or platinum highlights – but I was also invisible. This may sound extreme, but it’s the reality I lived. And if we landed in the purview somehow, it was, at best, to be mentioned as perhaps pretty and then quickly dismissed (you know, the “Wow, you’re pretty for an Indian girl” line) or, at worst, to be ridiculed for our ugliness. “Women of color were mostly unseen as partner options.
I’m so much bigger.Ĭhaya Babu recently published an article on the Feminist Wire called Walking the Tightrope: Good Indian Girls, Race, and Bad Sexuality.Īs a Muslim and a second-generation Pakistani-American immigrant, a lot of what she said stuck with me, especially a paragraph describing her experience in high school: I’m so much messier, my broad nose spilling over my cheeks when I smile. I tell myself I don’t care if I’m not “beautiful.”īut then I’m caught off-guard every once in a while when I catch a glimpse of myself somewhere and realize that I do not look like anyone in the movies. I don’t want to look like them – not outwardly, at least.
Hyper sexualized tv#
I expect to look like other girls, girls who are on TV and in magazines, girls who people call “beautiful.” Or sometimes I glance at myself in the mirror and realize that my arms are fuller and rounder than I expected.
Sometimes I look down and notice that my thighs are taking up much more space than I would like. Originally published on Feminspire and cross-posted here with their permission.
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