Colourism and our society’s Eurocentric beauty ideals affect Women of Colour the most – experiencing a vicious cycle of shame that keeps them from being completely comfortable and confident in their own skin: ashamed of their dark skin and perceived as not clean and beautiful, ashamed of trying to cover their skin with skin-whitening products, then ashamed of admitting that they use skin-whitening products. Ironically, while colourism persists around the world, the pale white skin ideal was replaced by a bronze, tanned skin ideal in the West. How could these ideals in Western society change, while the Asian standards remain? When a White person says, “I love your tan, I wish I had tan skin like you” that person doesn’t understand the historical trauma that comes from the skin itself and that comes down from privilege.

[un]Covering Melanin is a photo & video exhibition by Irma Fadhila that focuses on the experiences of Southeast Asian communities.