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As the days wound down to the end of the summer and I made my last few trips to the local swimming pool before returning to a crowded Yates, I noticed a significant upswing in the number of people at the facility.

Strangely enough, the pool stayed generally empty, but not a single beach chair was left unoccupied. I was a little bewildered by the neat rows of people lying flat on their stomachs and backs with no intention of stepping into the turquoise depths of the pool. That is, until I overheard a girl’s cry of anguish: “I’m never gonna get tanned enough for the first day of school!”

The concept of tanning was, perhaps, the biggest culture shock I had ever received after moving from Pakistan – a shock that still resonates with me today. The idea that someone would want – nay, die for – a darker hue to one’s skin went completely against the sensibilities I was raised on.

I grew up in a society that was obsessed with fair skin – a society in which my natural golden-brown complexion was met with disdain. Relatives used euphemisms for my darkness, as if it were some sort of illness the utterance of which would be insensitive.

An aunt would say, “Don’t worry my dear, _ghanam-rangey_ girls are also pretty.” Somehow, the way she paused before carefully choosing the words “wheat-colored” didn’t do much for my self-esteem. Neither did the fact that she followed up with a kind smile and, “It’s OK, once you start using Fair and Lovely you’ll see how beautiful you’ll be!”

Tubes upon tubes of the skin-whitening cream were shoved in my face by countless relatives. The ads for Fair and Lovely always feature a sad young girl, her face overly darkened by makeup, whose life was miserable and lonely until Fair and Lovely magically transformed her into Snow White within four weeks (or your money back!), complete with a Prince Charming and a happily-ever-after wedding.

Like me, millions of other girls have also grown up with the Fair and Lovely ideal – more than 40 countries in Asia, Africa and the Middle East have had huge markets for Fair and Lovely whitening products since 1975. Traditional remedies to darkness have probably existed in these regions long before that, too. (Of course, I have been experimented on with those also. The worst was a paste made with henna and herbs that dyed my face orange. The only thing that made it come off was Fair and Lovely.)

While naturally dark women slather themselves with such products in an effort to make their skin milky white, quite the opposite is taking place a hemisphere over, with tanning lotions and spray tans in their place.

This strange fixation with skin color on each side of the world is somewhat disturbing. I’m not sure whether the explanation is the appeal of exoticism, some type of colonial-era culture swap, or the fact that the Grimm Brothers wrote of a gushing Snow White in the 1800s and Disney decided to portray the princess who was “the fairest of them all” again in 1937 – it still makes no sense to me that a people would try to emulate a quality of another society that the society itself does not embrace.

What would happen if, one day, all Asians, Africans and Middle Easterners become the Fair and Lovely poster children, while the Snow Whites of the world become ghanam rangey? Not that such a thing could realistically happen, but when you’re standing in your neighbor’s garden, would your eyes then consider your own grass greener?

It took me precisely that – standing in the greener garden outside of Pakistan (Healy Lawn in freshman year, actually) – to finally love my skin. As I sat in the shade of the giant oak tree, curiously watching the hordes of people laying out on their blankets as they soaked up the sun on the first day of spring, I noticed a girl nearby on a yellow towel looking at me with some degree of reverence. Unnerved, I averted my gaze, but overheard as the girl turned to her friend and said, “She’s so lucky! I wish I was naturally that tan!”

You can imagine my surprise at the comment. Really? But what about all the times girls would be greeted by a tube of Fair and Lovely rather than a hug by their relatives back home? I had been one of them once; could I really believe that someone else wanted to be like me?

In the end, I decided that it shouldn’t matter what my epidermis was dyed – and that wasn’t just because of a much-needed confidence boost by the stranger on Healy Lawn that fateful day. Complexion is like an heirloom, a personal history of where one comes from. To purposely try to erase that history with whitening creams or to cover it up with tanning lotions is a subconscious decimation of one’s true identity.

Now, when I go back to Pakistan, any comments on my darkness go, as we say, in one ear and out the other. My grass is green enough for me.

(I do find myself close to taking back those words, though, when airport officials suspiciously compare me to my old passport photo – taken, of course, with a layer of Fair and Lovely slathered like icing on my face.)

Hijab Shah is a junior in the School of Foreign Service and The Hoya’s staff development assistant for institutional diversity. Behind the Veil appears every other Friday.

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