It was Lorde’s birthday this past Monday.
Category Archives: Writing
Girl, we fight battles!
I dedicate this to Joy and Sya.
We all have our own battles to fight. Thank you for your friendship.
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Girl
we fight battles
you and me
We fight battles
emotional tug of wars
we are
ambushed and interrogated
emotional tug of wars
we are
cornered and humiliated
in a war
with no blood or guts
but equal amounts of pain
no less
Girl
we fight battles
you and me
We fight battles
how did we get here
fighting a war we didn’t know
how the hell did we get here
when we thought this thing was over
Girl
we fight battles
you and me
We fight battles
How are we free?
colonized minds
do not resist
500 year old chains
Girl
we fight battles
you and me
We fight battles
Girl
we fight battles
and we won’t stop
fighting battles
because
Girl
We fight battles
you and me
Warriors
in
battle
I’m a skin-whitening, body-griping, anti-racist feminist. Yup.
I might as well come right out and say it.
I have and continue to engage in skin-whitening practices.
Things I do include staying indoors when it’s too sunny out, worrying about my skin when I forget to put on sunscreen, carrying an umbrella or a hat around with me and yes, using skin-whitening facial products.
I have had to sort through many feelings of guilt and shame for engaging in these practices so I recognize that for me to ‘admit’ this in a public forum – on my blog, today- is an act of personal resistance.
I refuse to accept the shaming that happens to me and so many other women of color who most will label ‘race traitors’, women who hate our brown skin, women with low-self-esteem or women who have been victimized by the ‘system’. I reject the narrow interpretations and judgments of my actions. I reject the shaming of black and brown women who engage in skin-whitening practices.
What exactly is the point of shaming women for pursuing beauty when it is one of the few sites of power available to us while ignoring the sexist and racist systems that set up this situation in the first place??? It is unproductive. It robs us of our voices. It denies us the luxury of being contradictory and imperfect – like everybody else.
Skin-whitening has been a long running interest for me, both personally and professionally. Intellectually, I started engaging with this material in 2011 as a capstone paper for my Women Studies undergrad degree. Since then, I have presented my thoughts at several conferences including the F-Word conference at UBC on April 28, 2011 and the 12th International Conference on Diversity in June 2012. Un-intellectually speaking, I started skin-whitening much, much earlier.
As I did more academic research into this issue, I became increasingly upset. I would read tons and tons of articles written by self-identified feminists who would judge, shame, poke fun and generally caution women against skin-whitening. After talking it over with a good friend (shoutout to Jennifer!), I realized I was actually reacting to the massive shaming that was directed at women who chose to engage in skin-whitening practices. This type of ‘holier-than-thou’ critique typically comes from white women or lighter skinned brown women towards their darker-skinned counterparts. Some examples are Jezebel’s Lindy West who did this with her piece on groin-whitening feminine wash in India and Tyra Banks’ 2008 episode on skin-whitening among Black women from the Tyra Banks show. Just type ‘skin whitening feminist’ into Google and you’ll find more articles that tell you how bad it is to whiten your skin, how you are such a sellout/victim if you do it etc etc. Enough guilt and shame all around, really. Fun.
So I did what I usually do when I get angry – I wrote. And as I wrote, I came to realize my own stand on this issue. It is important I write this and put this out there for people to read. I want people to know that the issue of beauty, health and women’s self-esteem deserves more complex treatment than we have been giving it so far.
I feel it is important to shift the discussions around skin-whitening AWAY from the shaming and veiled policing of brown and black women and TOWARDS acknowledging that the issue is much more complex.
Skin-whitening practices are embedded in systems of capitalism, colonialism and male dominance. We need to acknowledge that women of color have to navigate through this ‘triple threat’ daily. We receive contradictory messages about how we should look and how we should be every fucking day of our lives and we are the ones who have to live with the imperfect choices we make. If we start to try to complicate this matter, we can start to do some justice to this issue.
First, we need to understand that the skin whitening phenomenon has a long history spanning Europe, North America, the Middle East, Asia, Latin America and the African continent. White women were actually the target of skin whitening from the Greco-Roman period up into the mid-20th century. Marketing for skin-whitening products towards women of color only started in the 1950s when the press began to notice use of skin whiteners among African-Americans. Today, the skin-whitening market is estimated to be worth $5.6 billion in Asia alone.
It’s no secret that historical and ongoing colonization sustains the ‘white is right’ ideals of beauty. One of the most obvious ways that this ideal of whiteness has stubbornly persisted throughout the centuries are the systems of pigmentocracy that developed globally across many communities of color. A pigmentocracy is ‘a social hierarchical structure based on favoritism of white skin and European-looking features’ (thanks to Hernandez-Ramdwar at Ryerson University for this). Basically, the less white and European looking you were, the lower you are on the social ladder. Different pigmentocracies developed across the world – specific to the histories of colonialism, capitalism and male dominance of each location – although the underlying idea of ‘white is right’ is the same. The pigmentocracy in Brazil is different from India, which is different from Jamaica, which is different from the Philippines which is different from Singapore. You get my drift.
It is also important that we understand the pursuit of skin-whitening is not an aspiration to become white or ‘look like a white girl’. It is a quest to separate yourself from the Indigenous Black and Brown ‘look’. In insular South East Asia for example, rising through the pigmentocracy means separating yourself from the working-class, dark-skinned, Indigenous Malay look to an upper-class, lighter-skinned, Eurasian beauty. This is fundamental to understand because it adds more complexity to the issue versus simply thinking that all black and brown women want to become white. In a sense, we do want to ‘become white’ but it’s not the blonde hair, blue eyes or pale skin we covet…rather the gifts that come with whiteness. Its multiple and unyielding privileges.
Skin-whitening practices should be considered an “active strategy used by some groups to claim power over others in the same society’ (Lipsitz, 1998). People who can ‘compete’ for the privileges of whiteness are those who can afford to participate. High-end skin-whitening products can cost anywhere between $20 – $500 a bottle and the ‘full range’ of products (facial wash, toner, moisturizer, day essence, night serum and spot-on correctors) can easily go up to $1000. Ironically, those who can afford expensive skin-whitening products are constantly reminded that we have to ‘keep this up’ because skin-whitening is rarely permanent. It takes money, time, dedication and constant vigilance to achieve and maintain fair skin and its privileges. A harsh reminder to folks of color that whiteness is not something that is earned, it is a privilege some are born with and others aspire and work towards.
If we start to look at skin-whitening as an ACTIVE strategy employed by black and brown women, we can start to move away from thinking that these women are PASSIVE victims of the systems who need ‘help’ and ‘advice’ from those of us who ‘know better’. Let’s be honest here – giving unsolicited advice, however well-intentioned and shaming women who choose to engage in skin-whitening is patronizing. I know, deep down, that I am fine the way I am. I know I shouldn’t fret over my freckles. I know I shouldn’t fret over my double A cup size. I know I shouldn’t think about the acne scars on my back. I KNOW all this. You don’t have to keep telling me.
The more I think about it, the more I realize that the choices we make with our beauty routine have everything to do with the pressures we receive about it. For me, this angst comes from my mother who still frets over her freckles. To me, she will always be my beautiful mother but now I know that telling her to stop fretting or that she is ‘pretty no matter what’ denies her own experiences of living in this shitty world which insisted on telling her otherwise. Telling her to stop fretting would also mean that I am myself, in denial about my own gripes with my body. I grew up not only watching my mother fret but my grandmother, my aunts, my cousins and my friends fretting. If it was not their dark skin, it would be something else about their bodies.
Does this mean that I blame the people around me for ‘making me’ think this way? NO. By choosing to go through with my weekly ritual of skin-whitening, does it mean that I don’t love my Brownness, or that I’m not thinking of the examples I am setting for the young girls watching me? NO. Does it mean I wholly blame colonialism and capitalism for making this world the way it is and abdicating my personal responsibility for continuing to practice skin-whitening? NO.
Women make hundreds of choices everyday, and unless we are walking around in their heads, we have no idea what led them to the decisions they make. (many grateful thanks to Renee from Womanist Musings for this nugget of wisdom).
So yes, I am a skin-whitening feminist. And I am also an anti-racist activist. My world is not a binary. I do not have to choose one or the other or be put into categories. This is how I choose to see the world. Because of this, I can embrace the complex, the complicated, the messy, things that don’t make any fucking ‘sense’ and things that don’t fit into the colonial viewpoint of right and wrong, black and white, skin-whitening sellout or staunch anti-racist feminist. I can be both because I choose to be both.I can learn to live with my contradictions.
One day, I want to be able to stop griping about the freckles on my face, my flat chest, and my acne scarred back (among other things). Until then, spare me the guilt and shaming. PLEASE.
As long as we live in a society that experiences ongoing colonization, capitalism and male dominance, the skin-whitening industry will always exist. We need to start complicating the notion of choice while also recognizing the need to access it. When we can begin and continue to complicate, decolonize our concept of beauty and disrupt its connection to the value of a person, we will allow ourselves to imagine a world that is far different than the one we inhabit today.
The writing bug has bitten again!
I haven’t been writing on this blog for quite some time and it’s probably because I needed to process everything that happened this summer 2012.
I think I’m just starting to make sense of what happened in the first part of my summer (April -June) - the numerous conferences I attended and presented at as well as the margins zine launch that happened in late June.
Yes – my brain is slow to process. It’s October and my brain is just processing May and June. I fully ackowledge this and have come to terms with this.
I’ve decided that I’m going to share some of the pieces I presented at conferences this summer RIGHT HERE ON MY BLOG.
Mucho exciting right? I know.
I’ll be releasing these pieces within the next few days, hopefully one after the other, so stay tuned. 
Do it anyway…
People are often unreasonable and self-centered.
Forgive them anyway.
If you are kind, people may accuse you of ulterior motives.
Be kind anyway.
If you are honest, people may cheat you.
Be honest anyway.
If you find happiness, people may be jealous.
Be happy anyway.
The good you do today may be forgotten tomorrow.
Do good anyway.
Give the world the best you have and it may never be enough. …
Give your best anyway.
For you see, in the end, it is between you and God. It was never between you and them anyway.
― Mother Teresa
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Kindly shared on Facebook by a very good friend of mine, S. I was talking to her about the ironies in life…
sometimes, I think she’s one of the only people who get me. Here’s my ‘two cents’ and reflections on the quote above:
In an unethical world, the ethical are weird.
In an unkind world, the kind are strange.
In a world where kindness and ethics drown in a sea of money,
people have wealth in their pockets, not in their hearts.
Miss you S.
My Letter to Singapore by JY
This is a beautiful piece written by a friend of mine, JY.
Though I may have extra and slightly different motivations for choosing to stay away from Singapore at this point of my life, this piece eloquently sums up many feelings I share. Read and enjoy! xx
Dear Singapore,
I don’t want to leave you. Not when we’ve shared so many memories together. You will always hold a place in my heart, along with the Karung guni man’s honk on a lazy Sunday afternoon or the queue to buy bubble tea at that store- you know the one I’m talking about. But I’ve met Vancouver and she’s amazing. She’s free in a way you could not fully comprehend. She knows bigotry and loss and pain and poverty, but she also understands triumph and diversity and equality. I am not saying that you don’t. You do. But the way that you are free is… different. Your success and safety is ensured by your strict standards and the limiting of various expressions of freedom and I understand that. I respect that about you, but that does not mean I have to agree with you.
I still love you. Yet I want you to change. But for a relationship to work, it has to be built on mutual trust and respect. I think we lost that somewhere between Then and Now. What happened to us? And somewhere in that blank space I found Vancouver. She just happened to be there. She wasn’t love at first sight but the kind that grows on you and becomes familiar and the more you get to know her the more you love her. I’ve heard about London and what happened there and no, I am not insisting Vancouver is better than her. In fact, she is no better.
Vancouver is young, just like you. She is a diverse city, vibrant, colorful, loud. But she is also thoughtful and reflective. She is friends with radiant Summer and lovely Fall but also with Winter the pessimist and optimistic Spring. She is a rebel whereas you are the kid that was always there in class early, waiting for the rest of us to arrive. With her, I can be anything I want to be (just about). Already you frown, you disapprove. Imagine that- a city where some neighborhoods are too dangerous to venture into at night. Where a place like Insite can legally exist. Preposterous! Where gay couples can marry and we don’t have to check “others” on an employment form because we do not fit the squares you squeeze us into. Who would want that insecurity and crime rate, that comparatively backward transport system?
I would. I might. It is the ability to choose what I want that makes my heart ache with thoughts of leaving you. Freedom. A frivolous concept perhaps, but important. When I am with you I find myself aiming for materialistic goals, in a constant state of tension and competition. Anxious that if I dared venture away from a practical degree that has a place in today’s economy, I would be lost in the hordes of job seekers waiting to take my place. The practicality of an engineering degree does not escape me and perhaps you can ill afford to pursue what you love instead of what would get you a big paycheck and a booming economy. But Singapore if you have taught me anything, it is that hard work, determination and sacrifice for the long term will get me places. So even if I have to slog in a rundown coffee place with my economically impractical degree in hand to do that, I will. You’ve taught me well. But I’m not sure that what we are today is enough for me.
Love always,
JY
Singapore feminism: Fertility and Transnational Immigration
Picture courtesy of http://seijieiga.blogspot.ca/2011/01/singapores-fertility-rate-at-lowest.html
I have a new piece up on Women Suffrage and Beyond - a website based out of the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada. It was started by one of my professors, Dr. Veronica Strong-Boag, to connect various transnational movements for suffrage and political equality and concentrate on the historic evolution of woman suffrage in various countries across the globe.
I wrote on Singapore feminism and connect issues of fertiltiy with issues of transnational immigration into the country. I briefly talk about AWARE and its role in Singapore as a leading feminist organization.
Below is a teaser:
Post-World War II Singapore witnessed crucial nation-building decisions. Women were given the right to vote and right to stand for election on July 18th, 1947, two years after the end of the Japanese occupation. In subsequent decades, public policy targeted fertility and immigration, issues that directly affected women. Although today its international image as an Asian tiger has afforded this tiny island-nation notoriety as one of the richest countries in the world (“The World’s Richest Countries”, 2012), progress remains gendered, raced, and classed. Feminist alliances and protest have started to address resulting inequality.
To finish reading my piece, please click on: http://womensuffrage.org/?p=1013
