WHEN ONE’S COLOUR IS DIMMED TO DICTATE THEIR BEUITY…

Written by Lawrencia Moshai

We live in a society that has dimmed any lighter complexion beautiful whereas a darker complexion is seen as less appealing. This has however, left many womenfeeling less confident and uncomfortable in their own natural colour skins and bodies.

Today many women from different age groups tend to use creams to change their natural colour skins and even go to an extend where they inject their faces in order to avoid wrinkles, and increasingly having multiple surgeries so that they can keep their younger look. A lot of people in our society think that the beauty of a person can be seen from the outside forgetting that beauty is from within and frankly the inside of a person does not have colour. When beauty shines it shines with no colour but only shines as beauty. People have to understand and put it into their own knowledge that every person is beautiful in their own way, no two people have the same eyes or nose.

According to Arnold Saubgweme one of the Law and Politics Rhodes University studenthe personally believes that somehow colour to a certain extend does dictate ones beauty, as most of our clothes or physical attractiveness. “I mean if you wear clothes whereby the colours clash the probability of someone of the opposite sex or same sex, may find you attractive with the kind of lessen as we our visual beings,” he said.

 “To the fact that certain physical features, I or one…I ‘m not suited with not so bright colours due to my body structure and skin tone, it also depends on whether that other person likes the colour or not. I may find you attractive based on the fact that you are wearing a colour I like or not find you attractive because you are wearing a colour that I dislike,” he added.

According to Tinyiko Nyathi a student from the University of North West Vaal Triangular Campus, said it is however important that the society embrace people and accept them for who they are so that we build a society where everyone feels the sense of belonging not as an outcast. A lot of young dark skinned women are raised from a young age to learn to live with the consequences of being born the way they are and are taught to accept the challenges that their colour skin bring for them. Colourism has been an issue for years and the world still portrays being light skin as the right colour to have more like and have possibilities of being approached,  however those same images only reinforce the pain to those  who do not have that look in reality and feel ignored. They often also result in unfair resentment toward those who do.