Does the love for light skin color comes from colonialism or the many generations that have passed the definition of the right color of your skin? How do we navigate a community where people always talk about the ways that a woman's skin should look?

​

Children of Indian immigrants often find themselves in the pot of melting cultures where they balance between their own ethnicities and nationalities, and enjoy the bonding experience that they have with other children of Indian immigrants on Fair & Lovely bottles lying around in every Aunty's house. What does this sense of community imply to the stigma behind finding, or "being" the "right" skin color?

​

How does Bollywood and the South Indian cinema and television represent the true Indian woman? On the broad spectrum of the many shades of brown, does Indian media skew on one side, without balancing the other? Does the Indian society then wish or does it want that the next door girl's skin is lighter?

​

What does being brown mean in the globally diverse and interconnected communities around us? Is social media a platform for us to share our true vulnerabilities or edit our faces to appear in the ways that our community wants?

 

University of Michigan Indian-American senior - Kamala Meyyappan, and I break it down.