Shaniera Akram opens up about her struggle with wanting a darker skin tone

By Muhammad YaseenPublished On 05 Jan 2023

Activist and philanthropist Shaniera Akram, who made the move from Australia to Pakistan after getting married to cricketer Wasim Akram, took to Instagram to share her experience with having ‘white-skin’.

Aiming to promote a much-needed message about loving the skin you’re in a society that’s fixated on Gora rang (fair skin), Shaniera penned a long note on her Instagram to share her won experience as a white Australian woman – effectively pointing to the fact that what is despised in one place, maybe covered somewhere else.

“To all the girls with brown skin wishing they had white, I just want to let you know that there is a hell of a lot of white girls who grew up wishing they had dark skin too, I know I was one of them,” she wrote.

She went on to share the experience of “half the women on this planet, women, and girls all over the world that go to any extremes to have your skin colour (brown).”

Listing down ways white women resort to get a perfect tan that is considered healthy, Shaniera mentioned how she’s “burnt to a crisp” laying in the sun, used ‘solariums’ and ‘toxic stains’ to achieve brown skin.

“We thought that if our skin was brown we looked healthier, prettier and more attractive to boys. We would go to any length to change the color of white to brown because that what was instilled in our minds, that brown was more beautiful,” she wrote.

She went on to lift up all brown girls that are fed the opposite on this side of the world and told that fair skin is beautiful. “What I’m trying to say is, don’t try and change who you are, be happy underneath your skin, your beauty is interpreted by you, you are beautiful no matter what your skin color is!”

Kudos to Shaniera for propagating a positive message that the grass isn’t always greener on the other side.