From ‘natural’ beauty to ‘beauty-as-effort’: Raced and classed narratives of skin lightening amongst British Pakistani women in Sheffield.
About the author: Hester Clarke was awarded her PhD
in Social Anthropology from The University of Manchester in August 2016, for
her ethnography of beauty, beautification and the popularity of beauty work
amongst British Muslim Pakistani women in Sheffield. Her current areas of
interest include aesthetics, beautification, race and ethnicity, class, Islam,
gender, social inequality and multi-culturalism in the UK context.
‘Do you think I’m dark?’ Haiza
asked me, scrutinizing her reflection in a compact mirror she was holding up to
the light, tilting her head this way and that to examine her appearance from
different angles. She adjusted her hijab around her face, pouting a little as
she did so. ‘Be honest with me Hester’, she said, stopping for a moment to fix
me with a serious stare before turning back to examining each pore, line and
contour.
We were watching over her mum’s
empty salon, ready to book in any customers who might happen to pass by, and
conversation had turned to Haiza’s friend, Yalina. Yalina is the same age as
Haiza and the young women were studying alongside one another for their AS
levels at a local college.
I had met Yalina a couple of
times before, but had failed to remember her name and in my attempts to
describe Yalina to Haiza, I had said that I thought she was ‘pretty’. Haiza, clearly
taken aback by this comment, eyed me suspiciously before saying that perhaps
Yalina could be pretty but that her
skin was far too dark. In fact, she added in a pitying tone, Yalina has one of
the darkest skin tones of all the girls (by which she meant her Pakistani and
Bengali friends) at college.
(Extract of ethnography taken
from my field notes in February 2013)[1]
Haiza’s concern over her complexion and critique of her
friend’s darker skin tone illustrates the centrality of fair skin to
conversations of beauty amongst the young British Pakistani women I came to
know in Sheffield. When discussing their preference for pale skin, Pakistani
women stated that, quite simply, pale skin ‘looks
better’. ‘Fair skin is just nicer’
one woman shrugged, clearly confused at my continued questioning of such a
banal and obvious fact. Given the importance of fair skin to beauty, it is hardly surprising that at home
and salon, facial treatments which promise to ‘brighten’ and ‘lighten’ the skin
are popular amongst my interlocutors. In this post I demonstrate how
skin beautification in my field site is dependent on context and divided between;
the everyday and celebratory occasions, ‘natural’ and ‘perfect’ make-up styles
and perceptions of ‘English’ (White British) and ‘Asian’ (South Asian) taste.
When attending college, university, work and casual
engagements with friends, women’s skin beautification efforts are judged as
successful or otherwise dependent upon whether they are thought to ‘match’ or
‘fit’ her un-treated, un-made-up skin. Whilst young women assured me that they
themselves would not ‘go too far’ in the pursuit of beautiful skin, ‘the
majority’ of Pakistani women go ‘too far’ in the pursuit of beauty. As a consequence,
these ‘lower class’ women visibly damage their skin through the overuse of skin
lightening products, insist on wearing shades of foundation viewed as comically
lighter than their un-made up complexion, and indulge in additional, ‘tacky’,
lightening practices such as the wearing of coloured contact lenses which alter
their dark brown eyes to shades of grey, light brown or hazel. Whilst
quick to chastise ‘lower class’ Pakistani women, whom my interlocutors imagined
as the majority of Pakistani women, ‘upper class’, ‘English’ women are praised
for their ‘subtle’, ‘natural’, ‘sophisticated’, and ‘tasteful’ appearance.
However,
during celebratory occasions, the same subtle and natural make-up styles of
‘upper class’, ‘English’ women are shunned and even scorned. During weddings, birthday
parties, Eid-al-Fitur and increasingly university graduations, applying a
little make-up at home is no longer sufficient. For such events specialist Asian
Bridal make-up artists are tasked with ‘transforming’ women into ‘perfect’,
‘unrecognisable’, ‘doll like’ visions. These specialist artists, fellow British
Pakistani women, charge up to £400 for each look they create and whilst their
styles can be differentiated from one another by those in the know, all artists
use the same shade of MAC concealer and foundation, a shade significantly
lighter than any of the women’s make-up free skin. In addition to creating a
‘perfect’, ‘unreal’ looking skin, these particular Asian beauty experts are
praised for ‘contouring’ skills which they use to sculpt slim noses, small
chins, high cheek bones and large eyes, features my interlocutors most readily
associate with Euro-American women, all be it in a highly idealized form.
In these instances,
discussions of beauty are developed within a rhetoric of self-care, self-respect,
and self-development, moral attributes Pakistani women thought lacking in
English women. As one beautician Fazia explained, whereas English brides are
happy to apply their own make-up and buy their dresses online at knocked down
prices, no Asian bride or party guest would consider such actions. Through
expressing disapproval of English brides, Pakistani women position themselves
as morally superior to English women, even ‘Upper Class’, English women.
It
might be tempting to conclude that English and
Asian make-up styles are therefore not only distinct, but that Asian make-up
styles are a means of resisting the dominance of Euro-American aesthetic taste,
through praising artifice as a mode of self-respect and self-care. However, in
addition to drawing on particular hegemonic beauty ideals which
privilege whiteness, Asian Bridal Make-Up artistry as a commodity and form of employment
is cited as an indicator of both individual and community ‘progression’. Young women
are quick to point to the somber, bare-faced
brides depicted in the photographs of their parents’ and grandparents’
generations in order to emphasize ‘how far’ the Pakistani community has already
come. Today, my interlocutors note, British Pakistani women are earning
degrees, running businesses, marrying whom they choose and planning
their own weddings - ‘just like English women’.
I
posited some binaries at the beginning of this post; the everyday versus
celebratory occasions, ‘natural’ versus ‘perfect’, and ‘English’
(White British) versus ‘Asian’ (South Asian). Yet Euro-American aesthetic norms
and perceptions of agency also appear dominant in these stories, demonstrating
these binaries to be not as oppositional as they at first may seem.
[1] This work is developed from a wider ethnographic
project on beauty and the popularity of beauty work amongst British Pakistani
women in Sheffield, the data for which I gathered between July 2012 and
September 2013.
