Islam

One of the readings we did was “the Rainbow Sign” by Hanif Kureishi. In the book, the author mentions the story of a Pakistani boy who pours boiling water on himself in order to bleach his skin to look like white people. This story resonated with me as I have witnessed many incidents of skin bleaching in Sudan. Many of these incidents often lead to serious medical injuries and sometimes even the death of the person bleaching their skin as a result of all the harmful chemicals used. In Sudan, skin bleaching is mostly done by the darker toned girls as one of the beauty standards is having a light skin tone. This impossible-to-attain-by-all beauty standard has left girls in Sudan harming their skin in order to be accepted within society. Yet, after scraping their skin raw, the girls who bleached are often looked down upon as insecure, self harming girls, who failed to accept themselves. I found it odd how a society that dictates impossible beauty standards would reprimand those who try to attain it.

In this comic strip, I show an unhappy, dark skin woman being insulted by society because of her skin color. One of the people shown in the strip calls the woman “ugly and blue” in arabic and this is my way to injecting a bit of the sudanese culture to this piece. In Sudan, when someone’s darker tone is being called out on it’s “ugliness” it is described as blue. The second part of the comic strip shows the same woman, having bleached and peeled her skin in order to be accepted by society also being called names and shamed for harming herself. It just shows that society will always talk and people will always find things to criticize no matter what you do.