Warning: This article deals with an account of an eating disorder that could be triggering for some readers. Ballet flats, low rise jeans, sun dresses and South Asians, a few of the trends we’ll being seeing this summer. That’s right, from the swooning over Dev Patel, the lookalike competitions and how he should’ve been the "Sexiest Man Alive" to Indian jewellery being sold in fashion retailers, it seems like people are finally done hating on brown people.
Maybe they even find us attractive?! I grew up thinking my biggest flaws were the colour of my skin, the thick hair that covered my arms and legs, my bushy eyebrows that morphed into a monobrow, and the bump on my nose. As I went into my teen years at a predominantly white high school, I thought beauty was found in thinness. By 14, I had slipped into an eating disorder and lost weight but didn’t gain an ounce of feeling like I was desirable.
I traded Indian jewellery, traditional clothing, and everything about my culture in hopes of gaining a glow and a sense of desirability. It never came. It was after high school and finding a community of people who looked like me and were confident in their culture and beauty that I began to realise that no matter how much I changed myself, I would not be desirable in the eyes of many— not because of my weight, or my jewellery, or the bump on my nose, but because of the colour of my skin.
While I recognised this and began to reclaim my culture and what came with that recovery .