A photo gets reshared in the family group chat; in it my daughter and I are sitting casually on the cemented plank for the Holi shot. But, my feet in blue slippers are edited, hidden behind rectangular colorful blocks. I am taken aback. I couldn’t understand first, but later it felt like a blatant attack.
I was hurting as it was humiliating.
My conscience probed, “But didn’t it look jarring to you too before the photo dropped?” To which I retorted, “Yes, I winced a bit but was fine with it. This is how it looks. How much could I have powdered it to make it look less brown or poured more oil on it to make it look more supple? I just took the shot. I did not do much thinking.”
The hurt made me look deeply into the photo as if peering into it would make me accept myself as I am. But it magnified the unpleasantness. The blue slippers looked even more jarring to the white crust around the corner of the toes in silver nail paint and heels which were once painted red on my stay with the in-laws. Perhaps, it was supposed to be that way. Rejected, I couldn’t feel my limbs. It said out loud,‘ That part of your body is loathesome’!
Reflecting further, would I have softened my glance had there been someone else? I remember berating my father to oil his snow powdered feet during winters and tried not to look at my grandfather’s old, patchy, brownish-yellow skin hidden in his loin cloth. As they were being themselves, they were aging as they willed. It was my problem, if I had wanted them to be as I wished or be an extension of the image I had conjured up. So one day, i scrubbed the wintry mould off my grandfather’s feet and oiled my father’s feet. Now, they both looked shiny brown and smooth.
But, unlike men, women haven’t been proud and brown.
A product of lookist culture, I am not without prejudices. Unless nagged, I don’t know how often i get ready to please myself than others! With some effort and self-care, I can look shiny and smooth from disheveled and chapped. But mostly, I want to remain a brown girl with coconut oil and Nivea cream. It’s been long since ‘Fair and Lovely’ was taken down, but its ghost remains.