Review: Dark Girls

by Sharanja Devasundar

A little girl in a baby blue shirt sits on a couch beside her mother, pressing her back into the older woman as if trying to disappear. She must be no more than eight years old. She has big black eyes that shine like two jewels in the night, but she casts them downwards again and again. Yet, perhaps the most beautiful thing about her is the colour of her skin. It is the shade of the darkest chocolate, and shimmers vibrantly against her mother’s lighter skin.

“Do you like it when people call you black?” she is asked by a man off-screen.

“No,” she says, shaking her head back and forth slowly. The corner of her lips turn downwards and her eyes are cast to the floor again. “I hate being called black.”

This is one of the first heartbreaking scenes shown in the new documentary, Dark Girls, which ran at this year’s Toronto International Film Festival.

The film’s directors, Bill Duke and D. Channsin Berry, set out to discern the reason why colourism (the tendency within a group to prefer and bestow extra privileges to lighter-skinned individuals) exists in the world and how it affects women of darker skin tones. 

As I sat in the theatre where Dark Girls was playing, I could not hold back the rush of emotion and tears that streamed down my face. It would be difficult for anyone who has ever been victimized based on their physical appearance to not feel compassion for the women interviewed for this moving documentary.

Sadly, colourism is an issue that is barely spoken about and often goes unnoticed in today’s western society.  Dark Girls is exceptional because it overcomes this ignorance by bringing together a group of dark-skinned women from different backgrounds and ages to tell their stories of being hurt by family members and friends because of their skin colour. These women and their stories bring a sense of relatability and empathy to the film’s themes of prejudice and self-hatred.

I could almost hear the outpouring of empathy from the audience as a few women sitting behind me murmured in agreement when one of the woman interviewed admitted that, as a young child, any pride she had in herself would dissipate when she heard her mother telling friends that her “daughter has lovely eyes, great cheek bones, a beautiful smile ... Imagine if she had any lightness in her skin? She’d be gorgeous.”

The most controversial part of the film dealt with the sale of bleaching creams in America and other parts of the world. Bleaching creams are used by men and women to chemically lighten their skin colour. According to Dark Girls, bleaching creams have made over a million dollars in sales in both America and Asia.

This is an issue that I have been dealing with for a long time, as there are various people in my life who have subjected themselves to bleaching. It has made me question whether my own dark skin was ugly enough to warrant changing it chemically, and risking my health in the process. Dark Girls has reaffirmed my belief that dark skin, my dark skin, is naturally beautiful just the way it is.  I applaud this message because it is one that is not said enough, and yet is one of the most important messages about self-esteem and beauty in today’s multicultural society.

In remembrance of the film’s last words, I will end with the following call to action:

Dark girls, rise!