Cerebral Ramblings

A coupla centuries after white Britain bitch-slapped Asia around a few times and were all ‘you guys suck, and we’re awesome, nyaaa!’ (this is how I paraphrase colonization) – everyone’s still crazy about wanting to LOOK WHITE.

I’m not even exaggerating when I say ‘look white’ – literally, they want their naturally brown skin, to be the literal shade of white. I’m saying this based on the adverts I see in India — and it’s even more puzzling because I consider modern India seemingly less colonized than modern Colombo for example, the English language and American culture is given less importance here than the Indian stuff, while they have more dominance on Sri Lankan Colombo culture.

But when I switch on the TV, almost every other advertisement is about some cream that makes your skin 15 times whiter (I kid you not, there’s an actual cream called ‘the whitening cream’). And when they’re not talking about turning you white, the people still look white — it’s an ad about music or a phone or vegetable soup, or some series, and the Indians in it have their skin abnormally bleached by some mad special effectz.

This is basically every fairness ad in a nutshell:

Srsly.

It’s not just ‘get clearer skin’ or ‘get brighter skin so your features are clearer’ – it’s ‘LITERALLY TURN INTO A SHINY WHITE BEACON OF LIGHT. Because dark skinned people are ugly losers who will die alone’.

The storyline will ideally go like this…

Girl (or on the rare occasion, boy) is experiencing some deep existential crisis i.e. I didn’t get that job I wanted/ that boy doesn’t like me/ I keep failing my exams/ my life is a massive black hole. And it’s all cuz I’m dark skinned, FU ASIAN GENES… Then BAM, someone jumps out and pulls out a bottle of cream and is like, TRY THIS. IT WILL MAKE EVERYTHING BETTER.

Really?! says surprised and hopeful girl.

She wears the cream and just like that, she TURNS INTO A WHITE PERSON. And she’s like, fuck yeah I’m white, them managers gotta hire me now/ that boy likes white girls. Booya!

Anyway all in all, after her face is turned into a blinding torchlight, she wins at life. And all them other dark girls go cry into their palms for being so goddamn hideous.

Here’s a must-read hilarious account by Jezebel about South Asia’s crazy obsession with being white… and not just in the face area.

And I have my exams in a week, been studying all month and limiting my internet time. But I don’t know if that’s good enough to score high this semester. Maybe I should smear some whitening cream on my face just in case.