What do you say when your mother thinks bleaching your skin will clean you? Rid you of the dirt? Make you look more civilized? Be perceived as part of a higher-class family? At 15 years old, I thought about what shades of pigment would cause people to consider me lower class. I thought to myself: Why do I need to be lighter? Why is that a prettier skin tone than my own? Am I inadequate? Is this what all girls need to do? Why doesn’t my brother have to bleach?

Growing up in a South Asian household had its small challenges, but my parents and siblings have always been loving and caring. Yet, the stereotypes in that society can force a person into categories and destroy their value as a human being. One such stereotype includes associating darker-skinned people with a lower socioeconomic class. Hence the skin-bleaching. My father used to say education was very important, especially for a woman. He wanted me to rise in society, to be respected, and to become whatever I wished.

And so I did, more than he ever wished for. So much so, that my family thought my chances of marriage would be lost: I would be over-educated if attained too many degrees, and I would be too old to marry into a higher-class family. But when I fell in love with science, no one could stop me from attaining the unattainable, even if I was a brown Pakistani girl. 

“My religion taught me peace, to remain steadfast, to not resort to violence, to not show anger, to not be perceived as the terrorist they say I am.”

Fast forward a few years, I successfully attained a B.Sc. and M.Sc. in Chemistry, and even gained a scholarship to a prestigious Ph.D. program (synthesizing drugs for cancer), all as a British Pakistani female (pretty good, ey?). 

Even with the challenges in my own ethnic society, the British society I grew up in was just as disappointing; being torn between two countries and not feeling any belonging to any country was a masterpiece of fuckery on its own. In fact, I remember one incident clearly. Collecting charity for children in Syria with some university friends in a city with little-to-no diversity in the UK was what brought me to my knees more than any other day before. Little did I know what I was about to experience. A Caucasian woman, who, from afar, judged, analyzed, and evaluated my colorimetric value, spat on me and told me to go back to my own country. A Caucasian male passing by yelled, “You disgust me! You don’t fucking belong here!” Who knew an act of goodwill could turn so ugly. I stood in silence as I wiped the germs off my face. My religion taught me peace, to remain steadfast, to not resort to violence, to not show anger, to not be perceived as the terrorist they say I am. 

The quantification of melanin, while an objective, scientific term in academic literature, turned into my life-long horror story. Breaking free from the norm was inevitable in my books: no matter how much someone tries to define me, I define my success, my brown-ness, my intelligence, my career, and my future partner. Everything is defined by me, not by my skin color or my society.  

Note to self: Do not allow them to evaluate and quantify your melanin. You are wise, adequate, and pure just as God made all of us: unique and beautiful in our own ways.