Aranya Johar’s latest spoken-word performance, titled A Brown Girl’s Guide to Beauty, has taken the internet by a storm. The 18-year-old young and bold poet, has been a popular name in poetry circles for a while now after her poetic performance titled ‘A Brown Girl’s Guide to Gender’, had gone viral.
India is a nation that is obsessed with skin colour. In almost every Indian household, young girls and boys are taught to believe that fair or light skin is better. It’s a problem that has been discussed at large, and many men and women have spoken up about how this skin color bias affected them growing up.
In Aranya’s latest poem titled “A Brown Girl’s Guide to Beauty” she talks about how beauty brands and the people around humiliated her for being brown.
She emphasized on how young girls and boys have become conscious to their body image and colour primarily because magazines have images of glossy and flawless men and women on their covers.
She rounds up her poem by explaining that before we expect people to love us for who we are and how we look, we have to love ourselves.
The poem is important at a time when we’re teaching kids to embrace their identities and not be ashamed of themselves. Young parents could take a leaf out of her poem, so that they don’t end up body shaming their kids like our parents and scores of uncles and aunties did to us.
Click here to watch the powerful spoken word performance of Aranya Johar.
