Guess why people didn’t want Mirza to play tennis growing up? Ans: Tan

Babyjaan’s dear friend got into the car and they began their typical chatter.

I’m wearing pink tights, even I’m wearing pink tights; my T-shirt is nice it has Dora. My T-shirt is also nice it has a picture of a rainbow. You like my shoes? Do you like my shoes? They’re shiny. You washed your shoes? Even I washed my shoes.

And then, bam, without warning, her beautiful friend, always a calming, extremely sensible influence on my rowdy livewire of a daughter, held up her arm to Babyjaan’s and said: My skin is lighter than yours.

I always knew I would have to give Babyjaan the Dark is Beautiful pep talk. Our obsession with skin colour is so pervasive and so predictable it almost makes me yawn. Babyjaan’s faced it on the playground forever, except she doesn’t know it yet. Example: Your daughter’s so pretty (compliment to fair girl). Your daughter has beautiful hair (compliment to Babyjaan).

I’m not worried. I’ll just add it to the list of monsters she needs to know she will encounter in The Indian Girl’s Battle to Grow Up Sane. Note to self: Figure out a way to link it to Maleficent, her current favourite bad girl.

Thankfully, Babyjaan gets comebacks. At 3 I had coached her to respond to idiotic children who say “Your mama’s got funny hair”, referring to my uncoloured, more salt less pepper, more frizz less curls, with traces of gold. My well-trained bot simply replies: “Her hair is interesting. It’s cool, not boring (like your mama’s).” Ok, strike the brackets.

In fact, I had already planned a couple of rejoinders for this dark skin thing. She could say: “That’s because I have more melanin than you, go look it up.” And “Colourism is racism, surely you know that? Or hasn’t your vocabulary gone past four-letter words like dark and fair?”

But I must confess that every Girl Boss who talks about this issue gives me some measure of relief, and revives the belief that we are all in this battle together and that we will eventually wrest back our Right to Colour from the uppity fair and lovelies.

This week’s hero was Sania Mirza for me and Babyjaan (though she doesn’t yet know it). Mirza told reporters that one of the earliest obstacles she faced on her journey to become an international tennis champ was colour prejudice. So many people advised Mirza’s parents not to enrol her in tennis classes because she would __ (that three-letter word most feared and dreaded among parents of girls in India. Ans: Tan). This in turn would affect Mirza’s marriage prospects, never mind that she was then only a couple of years older than Babyjaan.

The international media obliged by retelling stories about India’s disgusting skin colour hang-ups; the national media buried the news on the sports page (even sports fans don’t read the sports pages these days, they are too busy watching Wimbledon and the World Cup). A woman talking about prejudice is hardly newsworthy here, right?

But don’t mind that you didn’t make it to page 1 Sania Mirza. Keep sharing and thank you so much. I think it’s time to introduce Babyjaan and her friend to your growing-up battles.

source: http://www.livemint.com / Live Mint & The Wall Street Journal / Home> Leisure> First Cut / by Priya Ramani / Saturday – July 05th, 2014