#malayalis

And not even the original video either. The amateur college version with pretty girls in kasavu sarees. Culture usually disseminates other way around between TN and Kerala.

so south asians, many of them, specially the Dravidians are dark skinned and many of them have pigmented lips. these pigmented lips come in all variations of shades and colouration. as a malayali myself, my grandfather’s lips were a fascination to me. he was a dark skinned, lean, tall man with a heavy base voice. he had big fat lips which i often see on the black people diaspora. his upper lip was the shade of his skin- totally dark and his lower lips were dark right on the lipline and the rest of the lower lip grew lighter and right at the center- opening of the mouth- his lip was the colour of a bright strawberry. it literally looked like a splash of pink merging into dark. and since i loved this man i loved everything about him including his big beautiful pigment lips.

he gave a variation of this pigmented lips to his son, who then gave it to me.

and never once, growing up or now, has this ever even been concerning to me. I love makeup and pretty much do my lips (lip liners, lipsticks, gloss, balms, etc) instinctively.

now, imagine me, opening up these goddamn social media apps and seeing dark skinned Dravidian girls, south Asian girls- outside of the country and from within their small Indian towns-

making reels. about how pigmented their lips are.

how concerning this is. the treatments they have got done to make the lips lighter or match them to each other. imagine. every one of these girls doing a lip tutorial and mentioning a “product” or “technique” to “hide” or “balance” their pigmented lips.

one girl, who is a south Asian grown up in London, put out a wholeee reel talking about how insecure she felt of having pigmented lips growing up.

im not taking shots- you do what you got to do to feel good.

but. i genuinely feel this is more of a contagious disease spreading than women actually wanting to be more powerful and authentic about their appearance.

and this is rampant. and all of them are girls- from mega influencers to micro influencers- alll of who talk about some level of beauty products or do the ‘GRWM’ mention this issue at some point.