For eons, women have been told what they need to look like in order to feel beautiful. Women, for an unbelievably long time, have complied with the beauty standards set forth by society rather than being content with their true selves. These shallow beauty standards allow the cosmetic industry to flourish, as it targets all our insecurities with unwavering relentlessness. Women end up trying to change the way they look in an attempt to make themselves feel beautiful.
The worst face of these standards has evolved into a billion dollar market, under the guise of skin lightening.
Even in the 21st century, having a dark or tan complexion is a source of insecurity for many people around the world. Many factors, racism being the most potent one, have contributed towards a tanned or dark complexion as being seen as less favorable.
Even in our own country, fairness creams and skin lightening soaps are all the rave, with even morning shows promoting the same nonsense over and over again.
Our obsession with light skin is quite evident through the multiple ads for skin lightening creams on repeat, 24×7.
A lot of my own childhood was spent watching women, apparently unhappy with their skin tones, using a magical cream and morphing into these beautiful, light-skinned models. Then there were ads where such skin lightening creams were bound to give one a confidence boost and improve ones life all in a span of a month or so (lol, wut?).
Tbh, cold creams do nothing but make your skin an oil infested swamp and a breeding ground for acne-harvesting bacteria. Their credibility in terms of lightening or bleaching the skin is highly questionable.
To sum it up: Goray chalay gaye, gora complex chor gaye.
With the growth in the number of skin lightening options, be it surgery, drugs, or makeup, it would be safe to say that our obsession with fair and light skin is not about to die anytime soon and a beauty salon just proved this claim right.
Kashees Beauty Parlor’s Instagram handle posted a video last night showing a woman’s extremely racist “transformation.”
While the video has since been taken down from their own page, others were able to capture it in all its horrifying glory. You’re about to find out why. Just watch this video.
Tbh, it seems like he was trying to transform her race, altogether, with the layers of foundation he blanketed her face with.
This is what the model looks like without any makeup: her gorgeous skin glistening beautifully.
And this is what Kashif, the head of Kashee’s Beauty Parlor, thinks she “should” look like in order to be found attractive by his followers.
What a sad example to put forth for other tan skinned individuals in an already complexed society. The severity of the act did not go unnoticed and many people rose to Instagram and Twitter to show their disapproval of this “transformation.”
Renowned social media influencer, Mariam Ishtiaq, talked about the matter publicly.
She took to her Instagram and spoke openly about how disturbing and insensitive this was. She went onto talk about how women of color have to deal with the inconveniences they have to face in their lives solely due to their skin color.
Soon afterward, other bloggers and social media influencers took to Instagram to talk about this absurdity. Ankita, Sabby Salon, and many others of the like rose their voice against this insensitive act which was done for the sake of fun and exhibition of Kashees Salon’s skills.
Needless to say, people were enraged about this and couldn’t help but highlight how infuriating this whole notion was.
People were shocked and failed to believe that this was real.
We can understand why there was so much commotion over this video.
Sentiments were hurt and people were enraged.
Renowned Pakistani makeup artists’ increasing insensitivity to the dark community is deplorable! I am getting sick of people like #Kashees exhibiting ignorant behaviour SHAMELESSLY. Fix your act or fuck off
— Urva Mudassir (@urvaa_m) October 30, 2018
Seems like Kashif has lost a lot of his followers following this one mistake.
However, some people tried to offer counter-arguments…
Following this, an Instagram page focused on all things beauty and fashion related, has started campaigning against such exclusions under the hashtag of “No Shade” to pinpoint the importance of racism in the world and beauty industry.
Following all the commotion and the hate, Kashees Beauty Salon took the video down. But, there’s more…
While researching we discovered that this was not the first or the only time Kashif has done something of this sort. There was another video where the same course of action took place, where an African-American woman was painted white with the caption: Transformation.
Why the hell no one is talking about this pathetic new ad by Kashees? They really crossed their damn limit. pic.twitter.com/uQznSKNT30
— cats will save us all (@SmolCatwoman) October 30, 2018
These incidents go onto show that while women are actively fighting against such unrealistic and irrational beauty standards, we still have a long way to go. We are nowhere close to achieving our goal and we have a long battle ahead of us. It is now time for women across the globe, to let the world know that we are comfortable in our skin and we don’t need to alter our color to feel beautiful. In the meantime, we are anticipating for someone from the Kashees team to come forward with an explanation.
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We Need To Talk About Racism In Pakistan