{"id":72,"date":"2020-02-23T22:06:46","date_gmt":"2020-02-24T03:06:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites.temple.edu\/projectcolorism\/files\/2020\/02\/Nisha.jpg"},"modified":"2020-04-11T20:04:05","modified_gmt":"2020-04-12T00:04:05","slug":"nisha","status":"inherit","type":"attachment","link":"https:\/\/sites.temple.edu\/projectcolorism\/stories-of-pc\/nisha\/","title":{"rendered":"Nisha"},"author":19727,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":[],"class_list":["post-72","attachment","type-attachment","status-inherit","hentry","entry"],"description":{"rendered":"

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Nisha is a doctor who works on cleft lip and palate surgeries. She is currently on a fellowship in Taiwan. Nisha grew up in South India and often heard comments such as, \u201cYou Southies, you guys are so dark.\u201d While her parents never reinforced such notions, she heard her relatives tell her mother, \u201cYour daughter is becoming so dark, why are you letting her go outside? How will you get her married?\u201d and equated being dark with being ugly. Nisha said, \u201cAll through my growing years, I felt I was ugly because I was dark.\u201d
\nShe used skin lightening creams, but her father discouraged her from using it by calling her attention to the potential harmful effects of those creams and asked her to not care too much about what other people thought of her. She understood and agreed with her dad\u2019s point of view, but also felt that maybe he didn\u2019t understand what she was going through.
\nNisha describes that it was a process filled with such small moments that helped her slowly redefine her relationship with her skin tone. Some of these moments occurred when she had parents of her patients ask her if their kids, with cleft lip and palete, will ever be normal again. She said, \u201cThis really hit me. What is \u201cnormal?\u201d What is this normal we keep talking about? What is normal for you is not normal for me. Why do we always feel this need to put things in this little box called \u201cnormal?\u201d Anybody who doesn\u2019t fit in that box, why are they considered abnormal? That\u2019s when I realized that we are placing a lot of emphasis on this social construct that we have created that we call \u201cnormal.\u201d I don\u2019t think there is anything called normal. You can\u2019t fit everybody into this box called \u201cnormal,\u201d and just because they don\u2019t fit into it, doesn\u2019t mean they aren\u2019t normal.\u201d And she realized it\u2019s the same issue with skin tones, and that there really isn\u2019t a normal or right skin tone, and that skin tone shouldn\u2019t really matter in defining an individual.<\/p>\n"},"caption":{"rendered":"

Nisha is a doctor who works on cleft lip and palate surgeries. She is currently on a fellowship in Taiwan. Nisha grew up in South…<\/p>\n

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