I open the door, searching for my four year old cousin. ' Junias, your mom is lookin.....Ah.. what the..I mean what are you doing to your face?' I ask her as she turns and her white powdered face looks at me. I look at her hands and see a bottle of baby powder. She just simply says, 'I wanna look white'. I laugh at her but suddenly stop and ask, " But ,why?".  Then I realize that our cousins are visiting and that one in particular is dainty and white- a stark contrast to both of us. I think about her words as I wipe her face of the white powder. I think back to all the times I saw those advertisements for skin-lightening creams and lotions. One that really strikes me is the ad for ' Fair and lovely'- a skin whitening cream. It starts off with a girl who looks like she had been dragged through ashes. Dark in the most unnatural way. She is supposed to represent all of us, born with the horrible affliction of being dark-skinned. Dramatic music...la la la la..( the music is actually la lala las) and four weeks later she could snag the lead role for snow white or play a vampire in the Indian version of twilight. She sparkles and all the boys that once refused her are after her like blood thirsty hounds. Yep, Fair and Lovely can transform lives. Sad thing was I never realized how discriminatory that commercial really was. What message was it giving? That being dark equals ugly? That acceptance is only for the fair ones?

As I observed the advertisements more closely I realized that it wasn't just fair and lovely, it was the whole commercial business that seemed to thrive on making people feel like they were ugly. It's not just the commercials, it's the society too.Maybe it's true that beauty is skin-deep. At least, in Nepal where there are still hundreds of thousands who still spend money on skin lightening products. I remember my nickname being 'Kali' which means dark. It's a Nepali thing, believe it or not  it was used with affection and love in my family. Too bad I didn't see it that way. I always blamed my dad because I figured he gave me the 'dark' genes. As I started thinking about it, I realized that even though I'd never supported such commercials or used their products, somewhere along the line I'd accepted that people in Nepal think light-skinned girls are more beautiful. It was a fact that girls hide from the sun to be lighter skinned in Asia and  other people in the west burn themselves to get tans. Suddenly I didn't want to accept this stupidity as fact. There were other "facts" to deal with- the first being that skin color can't be changed and the second being there are no valid reasons to want to. Why should I have to change? Why try to change what's already been determined by genes and nature and already beautiful?

I might have put up with the nonsense but I decided my little cousin would not. So I picked up a crayon and started coloring with her. I colored my princess brown and said, "My favourite Disney princess is Pocahontas. She looks Nepali with her dark skin and braveness. She looks just like you, Junu. You're really beautiful. You know that right? "  She  smiles and says, " Yeah, me and you are dark too! So we are both cute right? .....I have this lotion that smells like cotton candy...you wanna try....."

That was a year ago. Now, I meet her and every time someone calls "Kali?", both of us say, "Hajur?( Yes?) and smile.