Is Brown Beautiful?

Color is a part of our everyday life. From the yellow sun rays that fill our bedrooms in the morning, to the calming darkness that its absence provides in the night. Color is synonymous with happiness and creative expression.

Is this always the reality? Color is not all sunshine and rainbows.

Color is used to paint a picture, sometimes color is weaponized to paint people instead. From the breaking news headlines that racially profile people of color, to the lady who consciously guards her purse as a dark brown man walks past her

All of the Bollywood movies I watched as a kid had light-skinned heroes and dark-skinned villains. I never understood why the complexion of their skin determined their inherent morality.

It was so pervasive back then, that I started to question whether the Bollywood casting directors were right in their decisions. I started to internalize my own biased beliefs based on colorism.

For years I carried a subconscious inferiority complex due to the complexion of my skin. The lowly opinions I held of myself...were they mine? No. They were simply beliefs that I inherited from the colorist society I grew up in.

I realized my perspective was wrong. I thought that my skin was a disadvantage I was born with, I now see it for the gift that it is.

I noticed how my skin resembles the color of the chai I make on a daily basis. My skin looks like the Dairy Milk chocolate I love. When I’m out in the sun, my skin becomes a beautiful golden brown as if the solar system used the oven that is the sun to cook my being to perfection.

Learning that I am beautiful just the way I am has empowered me. I have become a more confident person, I am no longer insecure when in a room full of people that don’t look like me. My skin is no longer my weakness, it is my strength. I am beautiful BECAUSE I am brown.