Challenging stereotypes in beauty pageants

I thought I had to be like skin to be beautiful. People would say that I’m pretty for a dark skin girl. The reason I wanted to start doing beauty pageants in the 1st place was just because I wanted to be inspiration to girls like myself who didn’t think we’re beautiful enough to do your dream. Dark skin is beautiful. I was always very insecure about my skin tone and skin colour. I always wanted to like be lighter. Colourism is such a big issue within the South Asian community and it’s just really sad how people favour lighter skin over darker skin. My face prejudices when I was growing up because dark skin is known to be something that’s not very beautiful. People would say that I’m pretty for a dark skin girl during like musicals that we did in tango school, like they’d put you towards the back because you were pretty and they put like people who like their skin in front. This really affected like how I viewed beauty and that was really hard for me growing up and most of my childhood was spent not feeling beautiful. I always wanted to be an actress. The actresses in Bollywood and Indian movies are always light skinned, so I thought that was the norm, having no representation of dark skin. I think that was one thing that it was really hard for them guys like me growing up because we didn’t think we split it in teaching my skin. I have considered it in the past, but I’m glad I never did anything like that. Thankfully, growing up I realized that dark skin is beautiful and that it should be embraced. And I realized I wanted to be the inspiration to girls. I need to be that person that steps up and breaks this beauty standard. I remember seeing an advert for beauty pageants in the UK and thinking, Oh my God, I want to do this. Like, I did some research and I realized that, like, it’s very encouraging. Like they build your confidence. I’ve discovered that you actually get to represent people. And I wanted to be an inspiration to girls like myself who didn’t think were beautiful. I did my first pageant. I think I was 16 or 17. I’m very fortunate. I think pageants are very diverse today. We have representations from all different ethnicities taking part. It’s just really like maybe a confident version of myself. I did a charity fashion show. I raised 2300 lbs and models of all shapes and shapes and ages. Towards the end, girls who weren’t very confident of coming up to me and saying thank you for letting me have this opportunity. I feel very confident in my skill. It was really amazing. Everything I’m doing right now is to inspire people. That’s my biggest, like, goal in life. My parents are very supportive of me doing beauty pageants and doing what I’m doing. My family obviously, like they think I’m very beautiful, but even they have said, you know, we’ll be more beautiful if you are like a skin. It’s not something that they intentionally mentor. I mean, it’s just that societal norm for South Asian families. But now they’re very proud of me and they’re very big advocates of representation. The advice I give to my other self is love yourself, embrace yourself. But I’m so proud of my brown skin. I love it. I think it’s what makes me meet. We should all celebrate being unique and beautiful. I am seeing I.