Where did these insecurities come from? Did you experience nasty comments on your skin?

I’ve faced judgment for my skin for my whole life, starting from the time I was a child and was criticised by members of my family and community for my dark skin. In my culture fair is seen as beautiful and if you were not, then you were a problem that needed to be fixed. I had horrible acne as a teenager, so the texture of my skin was often made fun of even though it’s quite a normal thing for a teenager to go through. Beauty standards from both Western and South Asian cultures guided my hatred of my skin and my feelings of deep resentment towards it. I tried lightening creams and soaps to try to become fairer, and every acne product on the market to try to have a ‘perfect’ complexion.

What was the turning point? How did you start to learn to love your skin?

Towards the end of my time at university, I realised I was so busy that I didn’t have time to wear make-up every day or worry about what I was wearing. I’d go out into the world make-up-free, in clothing that didn’t hide my dark skin or my stretch marks and well… I didn’t die.

I felt a bit more comfortable in my skin but to ensure that it stuck I made sure to do the work. I devoted more time to mirror work and spending time with the reality of my skin and my body and it became a lot easier to just accept myself as I am. I made sure to be gentle with myself and focused on unlearning all these outdated ideals of what I was taught beautiful skin was. Texture is normal, stretch marks tell our stories and dark is beautiful too.

It paid off, and for the first time in my life, I was actually able to embrace the sun and my skin in a bathing suit this year when I went on my honeymoon.

“I was taught to hate my colour and stretch marks – here’s how I learned to embrace my skin”