I let my skin get darker to prove a point to my mom

This First Person column is the experience of Kelly Roche who lives in the Toronto area. For more information about CBC's First Person stories, please see the FAQ.

The browner my skin gets, the more I love myself — despite being told otherwise. 

My mom has always chided me for spending time outdoors in the sun. As a child, I didn't understand the relationship between colourism, caste and colonialism. Or the complex it gave her about "fairness" of skin colour.

Staying light is right, getting dark is bad, I was told. That's the message my mom received growing up in India.

We can thank the caste system for that: people in lower classes of rank and wealth typically worked outside and their skin was darker as a result. With British colonial rule of India, colourism cemented into the discourse.

That internalized white supremacy trickled down from my mom to me, but I've consistently dismissed it and maintained the hot sun feels fabulous on my skin.

Over time, my stance on this has deepened, just like my "tan" and unquestionably caramel complexion.

There's a lot of baggage to unpack when it comes to the skin tone palette in my family. My mom is darker than my dad — an anomaly in South Asia.

They're from different states: my mom is south Indian (Telugu) and my dad's family is from the north (Sindhi). She's Christian, he's Hindu. She's short, he's tall. They're opposites in every way. My dad was light-skinned — so pale in fact that people thought he was white when I was a kid. He's become browner with age, but he's still lighter than my mom.

Who cares?

Everyone, apparently.

Skin-whitening is a multi-billion dollar industry in Asian countries where some people are desperately aiming to become "Fair & Lovely." That's the former name of Unilever's skin lightening cream, which rebranded to Glow & Lovely in summer 2020 following public backlash. 

But the idea of skin lightening is still rampant, as is the anti-Blackness —  people with dark skin tones in India are discriminated against and referred to as "kaali" or "Black." They're looked upon unfavourably by many in social contexts from finding a partner to seeking employment.

This worldview didn't change when we moved to Canada.