Pigmentation
Posted By Sika on February 19, 2008
So riding out to Namikango Orphan Care and forgetting my sunscreen (I know, I know, stupid) I got dark again (well, for me. Otherwise known as “normal people colored”–thanks, mama). I think I kind of understand the desire to get darker.
I never see my full body (apparently there’s a good floor to ceiling mirror at the Standard Bank here in Lilongwe, but I am very rarely there to take advantage). I have nothing but a pocket mirror in my house and then at work there’s a mirror where I can see from my hips up if I stand against the wall. So the sight of my own body gains a kind of impact it didn’t have before when I could see it from the corner of my eye a million times a day (I counted). I examine myself much more carefully than I have in the past.
In this examination, my idea of what I should look like has shifted. When I first got to Africa I let myself get tan out of curiousity and because I knew, as pale as I am naturally, that if I tried to stay Seattle-pale I would just have episodic massive burns (’cause, see above: I forget to put on sunscreen. In Africa.) and be peeling off approximately 532 layers of skin every month. But now, when I’ve been inside a lot and it’s been rainy and so I become paler than some Seattleites (although always tan compared to when I came here) I actually look wrong to me. There is something incorrect about my paleness. And then when I see more sun and the accompanying increase in pigmentation I feel as though I look more like myself. Even though myself has always been (and still is for the most part) fishbelly white.
I’m not sure how much of this is due to the relative dearth of pigmentation in Seattle as compared to here. I know that I forget how white I am (even though I am very tan, no one would ever mistake my race. Probably not even if they were drunk and blind). I then see pictures of myself or other azungu and see how we are turned to ghosts by the camera, unable to do correct exposure of both us and our Malawian friends, and remember, like a flash, “Oh yeah, I’m white.” So I wonder if my feeling of correctness with my sun-exposed melanin is just related to my environment and what I see as normal here. Which would be ironic, what with all the Fair & Lovely skin bleaching creme that is available in every little tuck shop in the country.
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