r/SplendidaBrown

hi ladies, I am looking for the best eye cream for dark circles. I know for many of us dark circles are genetic, but I imagine a good eye cream would really help. I’m not sure what the best ice cream is so I came to this corner of the Internet with all my fellow Brown ladies to ask.

Do you have any recommendations? 🤎

Indian pickmes won't raise a voice when Wh|te women like Amy Jackson, Katrina Kaif, etc., are casted in Bollywood effectively taking away represention from Indian women. But they question Indian women who marry Wh|te men like Priyanka Chopra, Preity Zinta, etc.

Indian pickmes won't defend Indian women when - Charita Chandran, Supriya Ganesh, etc., are targeted on social media by lndian mn. But they immediately come to defend whenever we call out or counter lndian mn with the same energy

Indian pickmes rarely stand up to support other Indian women but act like pickmes for the mn who oppress and degrade us. They even bully or moral police Indian women who are interested in dating or marrying out to men from other countries or cultures

Indian pickmes don't have the guts to go to lndian mn subs and question them when they speak negative things about Indian women. But they are extremely judgemental and critical towards other Indian women in Desi women subs

There are already too many social hurdles for Indian women to succeed and represent ourselves properly. On top of that, they make things even more difficult for all of us. If they can't defend or say anything positive about Indian women, atleast they can sit out of the discussions revolving around Indian women and not interfere in Desi women discussions

So im a Somali girl and I’ve recently discovered people from Kerala. In my city there’s a lot of Indians and for some reason I can tell when a guy or girl is from Kerala specifically. And I noticed guys from South India, specifically Keralite guys have such a distinct look compared to other Indians. They have such nice cute curls, tall, brown skin, small noses and handsome faces. they remind me of Somali guys but I think they look better tbh lol.

So I have always been in love with watching animae and I also love everything Kawaii ( Hello Kitty, Cute stationery, Sanrio, building miniatures and all that IYNYK). I have found in my experience that brown guys when they find this out about me, are super judgmental and even mean about it. Like my ex-boyfriend thought it was so childish for me to like these things at 32 years old ( but what can I do, these kawaii things bring me so much joy and happiness). Even my own father berates me for liking Hello Kitty and Sanrio and all that. That same ex boyfriend berated me for being obsessed with my pets ( I have 2 cats and 1 dog) and said I need to be less focused on these childish things and focus on adult stuff ? IDK that relationship never lasted anyways but it hurt me when he said that.

Non-Brown guys I have dated love this about me and think its quirky and cool that I like Kawaii and animae and I dress up my pets sometimes lol . I even got some of them into animae and all that. Non brown guys are so much nicer when it comes to women having alternative or quirky and childish interests compared to brown men?

IDK maybe I have yet to meet a like-minded brown guy who won't judge me for liking these "childish things" but what has your experience been?

Hi guys! Just a little something I wrote that people here could probably relate to. It's still unfinished, but I was hoping to see what people thought of it so far. Trying to put some words to feelings. I want to see myself more clearly. Rand means "whore" in Hindi.

Rand

A juicy, thick bit of bacon glistens on the yellow table top as George and I ate breakfast under sunshine outside the cafe.  It had fallen off his avocado toast when he sawed through the tough, crisp slice with a dull breakfast knife,  jerking it around.  The bacon bit is the focal point of my gaze.  I mustered willpower to not pick it up with my finger tips and pop its greasy succulence into my mouth.  

But I can’t.  Everyone, including George, thinks I don’t eat beef or pork.  It’s not because of Hinduism, like people assume.  I tell people it’s because I care about animal rights.  But I know what I hide:  every so often I’ll get some bacon or beef mini tacos from 7/11 and eat it in the secrecy of my car.   I don’t give myself the good stuff, like the thick bacon from the cafe.   I feel too much shame to allow it for myself.  

Wanting the bacon makes me feel dirty and polluted.  Cruel. Gluttonous.  Undeserving.  A feeling that seems intrinsic to me.  I can’t imagine life without it. 

It’s the same reason I pay for George's meal even though he is trying to date me, supposedly, and I live paycheck to paycheck while he does not.  He drove over an hour here to see me, I rationalized, and I appreciate the company.  He helps the weekends pass by, despite his  vampire-like kisses that leave my lips reeling with pain.  I shrink at his touch, so much so that I don’t know why he still sees me.   I don’t like the way he pokes my ribs when he grabs me, or the way he pinches my sides and my behind when he wants physical attention.   Yet, I tell myself the company is enough. I am otherwise alone on the weekends.  George keeps me out of my mind.  At least he is nice.    He listens.  I just need to tolerate a few jabs and hold a few secrets, that’s all. 

_____________________________________________________________________________________

I am thirty six years old, and the heat doesn’t work in my apartment.  Cold creeps deep into my bones and rankles me.  I see it only now:  tolerating it as a mindset.  It’s about where you focus your attention.  Like how George used to walk barefoot in the snow when he was weak from kidney disease.  It’s how he developed mental strength and became a master of his body.  “Discipline, ” he touts.  He is trying to help me “get back together,” but the word “discipline” tastes like cold metal in my mouth.  All I want to do is crumble into comfort.  

It brings me back to when my ex-boyfriend Jared and I would go for winter walks.  He’d say, while prying my shoulders back so hard I could feel his thumbs dig into me, “Relax.  When you tense up you make the cold worse.”  

But I couldn’t help it.  When I was cold my body stiffened.   How many times we’d fight about it.  I’d tell him, “Stop! I don’t like it. Let me just be!” But he insisted he was teaching me “discipline.”  

During sex, he’d say, “With you, there’s a fine line between pain and pleasure,” as he held me in a position that made my muscles burn to the point of discomfort.  “Too much force and you’re in pain, but just enough and you make those noises that tell me you like it.” 

He heard the noises, but he didn’t hear what came out of my mouth. 

For a while,  I blamed myself.  I thought maybe I was unclear.  After all, I did not know why, but my body went along with his commands.  I reasoned that a mixed message – with my body giving in and my words protesting –  could have been confusing, ambiguous.  

I spent four years with him, saying no, yet going through the motions.  The last time he was over he pushed me into having sex again. I had to do some work so I kept resisting.   He nagged, goaded and coaxed me until I finally gave in. When it was over, he reached out with his hand to hold me, but my body reacted.  I caught myself off guard and recoiled.

I realized I didn’t like it when he touched me.

He stomped off to grab his shoes in the other room, clearly insulted.  “I should have just called a whore.  At least she would have sucked my dick and been nice to me.” He shouted loudly enough for me to hear as he walked out the door.  

Now that I’m single, when it comes to sex, I hesitate. People see me tense with apprehension and box me into an image:  inexperienced, sheltered, naive.  Easy to control.  The stereotype I ran from my whole life, since eighth grade, when I’d hide behind glasses, unknowing.  Their imposition of naivete is louder in my head than the truth I know and feel in my body:  the pain.  My memories – his bending my body into the curved shape he liked, his hands pulling my hair back, my eyes watering, scalp burning– suddenly disappeared as though they never happened.  If experiences make you, I was forgotten.  A blank slate: a canvas for projection.  

I tell myself, people see others only one frame at a time, from one angle.  No one ever wholly sees anyone.  

But I realize some people don’t see I’m there at all.   They see only what they want to.  

__________________________________________________________________________________

When I was thirteen, we left the diverse area I grew up in, where I was one of many brown kids, for a homogeneous one, where, in most of my classes, I was the only brown kid.  My new friends burned me mixed CDs with rap songs that gripped me with their strong beats and piqued my curiosity about a world I did not know.  I wore thick black liner over my eyelids and tight-fitting sleeveless shirts, alone at home, hours in front of my bedroom mirror, sucking in my stomach,  jutting out my hips, arms akimbo. I’d speak to my reflection, going on about anything and everything, opinions about colors and coffee and math, examining my facial expressions and noting flattering angles I could replicate at school to catch someone’s eye.  

My behavioral change angered my mother, who thought that, as usual, I was concentrating on all the wrong things.  Once, at an Indian party, when I kept staring at a cute boy, she pulled me aside and backed me into the wall by the staircase. She swiftly zipped up my sweatshirt to cover my chest underneath.  The metal of the zipper pinched the skin of my breasts with a sharp bite.  She seethed,  “Ooo-hooo ah-haaa… Who are you trying to look like?”  She eyed me up and down, “You will bring us nothing but shame.  Don’t be a slut!”  

I didn’t know that my mom knew the word “slut.”  I thought it was uniquely American.  I had learned what it meant in my seventh grade language arts class back in California, when we read A Scarlet Letter.  My teacher explained a slut is “someone who sweeps dirt under a rug.”  But later, when I moved in eighth grade, I learned a different meaning.  Here, sluts were girls who were sexually active.   

No one had been sexually active at my old school.  We were all children of strict immigrant parents, in a hypercompetitive academic environment.  My good grades made me feel like a star.   In my new town, I was visible only as the “smart brown girl,” which was, by itself, the punchline of a joke to my white classmates.  With my new priorities, I was jealous that these “sluts” from eighth grade were at least considered attractive, even if they weren’t always respected.  I didn’t know what respect was.  All I could see was that they held power.  They were desired. Sex was the proof.  People seemed to care about their favorite colors and sympathized when they didn’t like math.  I, on the other hand, was a ”slut” whom no one would touch, no one would hear, no matter how much I refined my opinions.

My mom saw things differently.  The day before ninth grade she sat next to me on my bed and admonished me. 

“No white boys,” she said, referring to the only types of boys around, as if they couldn’t get enough of me.  “They only want one thing,” she explained.   

She paused for a moment to sharpen her voice. “Sexxxxxx!”

The sibilance slithered through the air and struck me in the gut. Heat rushed to my face.  I was embarrassed that my mom said the word sex.   But mostly, I felt ashamed for her noticing I could want it. 

She continued, “ If you get pregnant, we will kick you out.  There will be no one there for you.   You will be hungry and die on the street.” 

Starving on the street couldn’t be that bad, I thought.  At least I’d have freedom.  Here, the only place I can be free is my mind.  So I bravely held onto my quiet, complicated crushes and elevated my devotion to a magnitude no teenage boy deserved.  My R-rated fantasies were sneaking out at night to meet them in my neighborhood under the stars, by a picturesque white pavilion.  I envisioned deep philosophical conversations about life and passion.  I never initiated, but I’m pretty sure there were no boys who wanted to meet me.  

There was one boy –Dan – whom I'd talk to for hours on AIM.  In the summer we messaged late at night, through early dusk until the sun lit the sky bright blue. He told me about a dream where he was running along a railroad track that split off into a fork. There was a girl at either end.  On one side of the track was Erin, a pretty, bubbly girl perpetually surrounded by admirers.  As a shy guy, he didn't think he had a chance with her.  I reminded him he was smart and handsome, a total catch.  He never told me who the other girl was.  

After a track meet one night, our bus broke down. We were stranded outside at 1 am, in the middle of winter.  Boys and girls snuggled together in blankets to keep warm. Couples kissed in the snowfall.  When the replacement bus finally came, Dan sat next to me on the same seat.  The moonlight struck his face, creating a soft, blue glow.  I watched him speak to me as he gently rubbed my thigh.  I use the word “watch” because I wasn’t exactly listening.   I was observing the soft, gentle way his lips moved as he made dumb comments, even though he was the best at math in our grade.  

Suddenly, he leaned closer and reached out with his fingers to brush my bangs behind my ear.  I froze and looked down, uneasy.  His index finger ran down my forehead, down the bridge of my nose, to my top lip, then the bottom.  

“Dan!” The assistant coach interrupted out of nowhere.  She was right above us, “Stay away from her!  She’s innocent.”   

Innocent?  I was, even though I didn’t want to be.  I wanted to have power. I wanted to be desired.  

“You touched my pimple,” I scrunched my face at him.  He shook his finger off and scrunched his face back. 

For the rest of the ride, he talked to the girl in the seat behind me.  

I didn’t know why I said what I did.  Years later, I’d replay the moment on the bus and remember that soft, blue glow, wanting, wishing it had happened. 

____________________________________________________________________________________

Veronica - one of the track varsity girls – had called me the “ringleader of the losers.” Somehow she took me under her wing.  One day after practice we sunk into a soft couch  in her family’s basement, lights off, watching a movie, under two separate blankets on either end of the couch.  When I noticed the blankets were tangled together, I started to feel like maybe I had a friend. 

The TV flashed, bathing the contours of the room electric blue.  In the soft light, I could make out her face closer to mine.  Her dry lips opened.  I waited for her to say something in the silence, but instead, she brushed her torso up against mine.  Her body’s weight sunk into my wrists, the blanket thin between us. 

 

I bristled and looked away, avoiding the intrusion of her eyes.  I couldn’t read her, and I didn’t want to assume.  But it occurred to me that she might be trying to kiss me.  

 

Not knowing what to say or do, I stayed quiet, unresponsive.   

Her eyes furrowed.  “You’re a repressed homosexual!”  She hissed. The heat of anger emanated from her breath.  It was unexpected – foreign; it didn’t belong to me.   It felt – weighty.  

I’m not sure how I responded.  I can remember only how I felt, trapped behind a familiar barrier:  I wanted to wrap myself up in my separate blanket and go back to watching the movie.  I wanted to pretend nothing happened. 

I managed to keep it out of my mind until a few days later when she called me and asked, “You know how some people like vanilla?  And some people like chocolate?” Then, a pause. “Well, I like both.” 

I imagined the lilt of a smile in her voice, as she waited for my response.  Could what she said have carried a double meaning? I knew she had kissed boys back in eighth grade.  Maybe she was bisexual.  But it also did not escape me that she was white like vanilla and I was brown like chocolate.  It almost felt like she was trying to say she liked – me.  Not just as a platonic friend.  But her tone was not romantic either. 

I buried it in my mind.  I didn’t want things to change between us.  I feared becoming friendless again if I confronted her.   But mostly I couldn’t see myself as likeable that way to others. This new town had pushed me to the outskirts.  Here  I hung onto the world, my acceptance dangling at the end of a string, more than it hung onto me.  

For two years after, Veronica was the only one who hung on.  Tightly.  She walked with me in the halls, dropped me off to each class, drove me to school and home from practice. She called me incessantly.  Once she called 26 times in a row.  I ignored her, even though I had my phone on me.  Every time it buzzed I felt my body tense.  After many calls,  I got a text from my friend Shannon and responded to her.  Seconds later, I hear back from Veronica, “Pick up the phone, dick, I know you’re there.”  

I didn’t realize until years later that I was hiding from her.  What I felt was fear – of my “best friend.” 

And I was always afraid.  So I hadn’t even noticed. _____________________________________________________________________________________

“Have you ever been kissed?” Joey asked. His hand drew closer to me in the darkness of his basement, brushing a stray tendril behind my ear.   I was taken aback at his touch.   Silvery moonlight streamed in through the small windows, highlighting lean, sharp angles in his face.  I noticed his chocolate brown hair, smooth, olive skin, eyes —clear like light greenish-blue pools of water.     

“No,” I took a deep breath, confirming his suspicions.  

I was eighteen years old, deprived and aching for the high school experiences everyone else seemed to have.  Four years had gone by, wanting and waiting, and everyone knew all along: the secret I hid in baggy gym clothes and messy, uncombed hair,  clearly written on my face for all to see.

My stark reality hung in the air, and he smiled in the silence.  He leaned toward me and his thick lips planted onto mine, suctioning them like an industrial vacuum.  

“There,” he smiled charitably. 

Finally, I thought.  My first kiss happened, the collision of our lips, of my desperation with what seemed like his pity.  

Somehow I had convinced myself it was romantic.  Our relationship lasted six months – far too long, in my opinion.   We fizzled out, the way the curls of smoke from his joints dissolved and vanished into the air.  He never let me smoke, even though I had wanted to badly.  He said I was too innocent. 

What I remember most from our time together is that I hated the way he saw me. 

_____________________________________________________________________________________

“You’ve got a banging body but an average face,” Raj held out his hands to hold mine, a smile across his lips.  I reached back  and let him rub my palms.  I began to cry. 

Raj looked around, clearly angry at me for embarrassing him.  

All I could say back to him was, “You said I had an average face.” 

“Do you want me to be one of those guys who tells you you’re the prettiest girl in the world?”  He shot back in defense. 

I picked up my things and made my way out of the cafeteria, sad about what his comment revealed to me.  I needed to tell my roommate Megan.  

He followed me while I tried to understand why I was so upset.  I don’t think I was sad about my average face.  I could bear that.  I had lived so long in the shadows.  Now I had a boyfriend.  What I couldn’t bear was his gaze that held the swift power to devalue me.  To make me cry in an instant.  

When I complained to everyone, he tried to console me, “I didn’t mean it like that.  I just wanted to be honest with you.  To me, not even models are 10/10.  A 10 is so very rare.. No imperfections.  Basically, not human.”  

“I hate to be human,” I said, wanting nothing more than for him to see the human inside of me, “I want to be perfect.”  

I meant that I needed to be.  I needed to be, because I was dark.  If I wasn’t perfect, I wouldn’t have a chance, I thought. 

Once we were walking down George Street and stopped by some steps in front of someone’s house. 

“I love you because you’re so innocent,” he smiled, opening his arms for a hug.  I winced inside.  Even if I was, I experienced the description as friction against my nerves.  It wasn’t true to me.  I didn’t know everything, but I always knew more than people expected me to.  

I smiled back, wrapping my arms around him, dejected. He must think I’m safe.  Accessible.  

I wanted to be pretty, like the other girls.  Desired in a light above.

I only felt like that when he couldn’t keep his hands off me.  Didn’t that mean he thought I was pretty? 

One night, Raj went to a party.   I stayed back at my apartment to rest up for a track meet the next day.  I slept in the bed, only to have the strangest dream, where Raj came back drunk.  He laid down and sank like deadweight on me as I slept.  In my dream, we were suddenly having sex in the thin blue haze of midnight. Only I couldn’t say anything.  I felt the shock of bare skin inside me and my joints locking, the coldness of the air against my legs.  I couldn’t move.  I was still in the dream.  Right?   My mind tossed and turned. 

Megan made chocolates for my birthday. I ate them every morning before I ran. Soon I noticed I did not want the chocolates anymore. They were making me... sick.

Then, I began to spot.  I went to the doctor and tested positive on a pregnancy test.  

He was supportive.  He paid for the abortion and held my hand during it.  

After I left him, I heard he was heartbroken for years.  My last memory with him is sitting together on the bench at Port Authority along the Hudson.  He told me about a dream he had once of us married, with a little girl who had my almond eyes.  Of chasing after her when she pranced around in her diaper. 

Occasionally, I wonder if he loved me.  Not because I loved him back.  But because I wanted proof I was pretty.

Thanks so much for reading.

Idk if this sub is filled with people that are Mainlanders and thus have 0 contact with white people due to geographical reasons or are ABCDs etc that were just never in social circles with them.

Regardless of what the case might be, a lot of yall have absolutely skewed views on them. So much so, that I‘ve read someone lamenting why „mail-order brides“ were not as common in South Asians as for South East Asians. I mean, are yall okay? Lamenting why soft prostitution that women from those countries partake in because they have 0 other choices is a new low.
And just imagine what type of men even have to make use of such a power dynamic. Complete and utter losers.

It seems to me that many here have some fantasy where they put white men on a pedestal. If you live in the West, just go out of your room for a day and people watch. And truly think about how many of the men walking past you are actually worth dating or even optically pleasing at the least. You don’t have a bunch of Chris Hemsworths walking around, that much I can tell you.

If your preference is white dudes, great. Go ahead and date your preference. No laws are stopping you from doing that. But for the sake of yourself, maybe have a little more respect for yourself and don’t let internalized racism make you accept a loser and hype him up just because in your mind white = automatically superior.

Not every white dude is some feminist icon, better partner, more financially and socially secure or even better-looking.
And please never buy into some fantasy of a knight saving you. Save yourselves.

Just to preface this: every skintone is beautiful and this is not meant to be colorist in any way. I just prefer my skintone to be a light to light-medium tan as that suits my features the most. If I get lighter I feel like it washes them out and when I get darker the same thing happens but inversely.

I also notice how, when I am fit and skinnier, my skintone tends to be lighter and also glow more. While when I am stressed or overweight/fatigued my skin seems to darken and the flaws such as hyperpigmentation etc become much more prominent.

Does anyone else experience this as well?

I am 30, and I came across a video where a woman in her 40s talked about how she’s only now getting to a point where she’s not *always* getting “pretty privilege”, and how she’s actually able to turn it “on and off” at will (based on hair, makeup, clothes). Whereas it was constant in her 20s and 30s. And I couldn’t help but think…how that was *never* the case for me? And even when I am all dressed up, I still don’t necessarily get it.

This was true when I was 21 and 137 lbs at 5’7, and it’s still true now at 30 at 160 lbs. Like I’ll get it here and there, but I see how other young women around the 20s/30s age ranges are treated versus me, and I wonder what they have that I don’t. Like I will literally be talking to male coworkers, and they’ll avoid eye contact with me while having a conversation, seem super disinterested in engaging with me, and even if we’re walking together in our office and having a full-on convo and we’re walking through doors, they’ll literally wait for me to open it for them. And I get doors slammed in my face by stranger and somewhat-acquainted men. And then I’ve had so many experiences where my friend and I will meet a guy (and he’s not even “on the radar” for me as a potential boyfriend for several reasons), but he’s so attentive towards my friend and totally ignores me. Or even recently I was in a workout class with my friend, and I noticed when we (everyone in the class) were putting away equipment, there was this one guy who, if I crossed paths with him, he’d kind of just “cut me off” and try to walk past me, whereas with my friend he was all chivalrous and would let her go first. It’s these little things that get to me.

Can someone who gets pretty privilege explain how you do it? I’ve tried being skinny, presenting myself well, being young, being older, etc but something about me screams “invisible woman that barely registers as being worthy of respect”. My face doesn’t have any deformities, I have thick long hair, no signs of aging, and facially I don’t think I’m worse off than the average woman who does get this type of treatment. So what is it? And it’s not even about getting sexual/romantic attention. I have always been a bit curvier, and I do experience these things more vividly when with size 0/2 white, white-passing-racially-ambiguous type of women, or East Asian so maybe that’s it? I just wanna be treated like…not invisible, you know? So how can I do that?