This 18-Year-Old Poet Takes On Age-Old Beauty Conventions In 3 Minutes

This 18-Year-Old Poet Takes On Age-Old Beauty Conventions In 3 Minutes

“Don’t go out in the sun; you’re getting blacker and blacker every time I see you!” “Ha! A photo of you and your best friend looks like a black and white one.”

Growing up, these were comments, taunts, and jibes I was used to. It was normal to me that I was evidently abnormal.

That I was born dark-skinned in a country that has a huge population of brown-skinned people, but one that was obsessed with being “fair and lovely”. Because dark and lovely was a paradox.

And if you think only women have been through this kind of constant discrimination, think again.

In India, men are constantly vilified for the colour of their skin, the build of their bodies, the amount of money they make…or don’t, the expression of their emotions…which of course, makes them pansies.

Standards, ones that are frankly impossible to meet, have been set in stone; generations worth of conditioning continues; and rigid mindsets basically mean no one is happy.

And that’s exactly what 18-year-old slam poetess, Aranya Johar, expresses in her latest piece.

Slapping on one fairness cream after the other, watching loved ones starve to obtain the perfect body, failing to meet expectations that random people have set for her — Aranya voices every young person’s insecurities, giving life to a deep-rooted problem we’ve been facing for too long.

Watch this powerful teen smash age-old stereotypes and conventional beauty standards in A Brown Girl’s Guide To Beauty in collaboration with Unerase Poetry…in under 3 minutes.

PS: Don’t miss the title sponsor — Shaadi.com. *applause*

Hauterfly Staff

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