From the outside, our cultures seem beautiful as our community comes together to celebrate our history and what we believe in. However, when you dive deeper, there are little flaws within each and every one of them. As I grew up in the South Asian community, I observed many stigmas that ranged from colorism to the stigma around mental illness that negatively impacted the upbringing of many young girls like me.
Colorism has been an ongoing issue in the South Asian community, and it’s something that causes a negative psychological toll on how one views or values themselves. Despite the fact that the South Asian community is known for its range of brown skin tones, if, for example, a girl is born a darker shade of brown, some members of the community immediately treat her differently and verbalize how they view her as less beautiful. They define fair-toned or golden brown skin as “perfect,” and if you don’t have that then they let you know you’re not beautiful in subtle but humiliating actions … yeah, pretty messed up. The fact that we haven’t accepted darker skin tones as being equally beautiful in the 21st century shows an error in our culture and community. To make an individual feel insecure about the way they look because of the color of their skin is not how a community should treat one of their own, much less anyone else.
As Selena Gomez so perfectly put it years ago in her popular song “Who Says,” who says you’re not perfect? Apparently the elder ladies in the community hadn’t gotten the memo and felt the need to tell each girl who indeed was not perfect to them. It was a common thing where if a girl was too thin, the elders would bluntly ask “Why aren’t you eating enough?” and if she gained weight, because of the body complex they gave her, they would say “You should lose some weight” or compare her to someone else and say “Why don’t you look like her?” This constant battle of trying to please others and aiming to look like the person they compared you to becomes so mind consuming. As other girls and I in the community were growing up, we were already going through a sense of change and trying to understand who we are; the body-shaming was the perfect cherry on top to destroy our self-image. Teaching kids from a young age that they shouldn’t be proud of the way they look ends up amplifying their insecurities, especially when they grow up to be teenagers who are trying to learn to love the bodies they are growing into. Who are we to tell them whether we think their bodies are perfect or not? Complimenting these kids would do more good than any unwarranted criticism about things out of their control, so maybe we should start living by the saying, “If you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all.”
South Asians take pride in the fact that their children are studying to become doctors, lawyers or engineers or that they are already in those professions … it’s literally never anything else. Since I was a kid, all anyone would ever talk about is how “You have to become a doctor” and my question is, why? There are so many other successful job opportunities out there, but barely anybody in my community mentions them to their children. Instead of teaching children from a young age that there are a few successful professions, make it a habit of telling them all the professions they can be successful in, not just the ones you want them to go into. I consider this another cultural stigma because if you don’t choose one of those careers, some people in the community seem to consider you inferior to others … and I don’t get that. For example, if a person considers choosing a career path in clinical psychology and dedicating their life to the wellbeing of others, how is that inferior to being a doctor? In the end, both careers have positive contributions to society, just in different ways.
One of the worst stigmas, in my opinion, is the fact that as I was growing up, I noticed that people in my community did not take mental health seriously at all. Depression, anxiety, PTSD, etc. to them are nonexistent or just a “phase,” and to say that’s concerning would be an understatement. Even today, if you were to go to some elders in the community and talk to them about mental health, you would get disapproving looks from people, and some people would just say religious practices will “cure” you. It becomes difficult to open up about your mental illness when the culture invalidates your feelings and in some cases when some families view mental illness as a source of humiliation. It’s sad to see that this thinking in the community prevents kids from feeling comfortable enough to open up to their families about serious issues that they are facing in the real world. Ignoring the fact that mental illness is a real thing and painting it as kids losing their connection to religion is so misguided and can sometimes be harming. This backwards way of thinking in the culture needs to be reformed so younger kids can seek out help rather than waiting until they become adults, especially when it comes to issues like self-harm.
The purpose of this article isn’t to say that the entire culture is horrible and needs to be thrown out or “westernized,” but it is rather to point out the shortcomings within it, so that people can become aware and become more open-minded in some cases. All of these stigmas within the culture are serious and shouldn’t be treated as anything less than that. They affect people within the community and in some instances can even be life-threatening. These stigmas aren’t necessarily limited to just my culture, but can be seen within cultures all around the world, so why not spread awareness? We aren’t moving forward as a community until we fix these issues within our cultures, so maybe it is time we took a step in the right direction.