The Branding of Brownness

As an Indian woman, I have spent much of my life being defined by one thing above all else: brownness.

Sawla rang became my identity long before womanhood did.

Colour prejudice in India is deeply normalized, especially for women.

Growing up in India meant learning very early that melanin is treated less like biology and more like a character flaw. Entire industries have thrived on manufacturing insecurity around darker skin. If India did not possess a deep-rooted obsession with fairness, products like Fair & Lovely would never have become household names.

Fairness creams, bleaching treatments, skin-brightening’ facials — the beauty industry has sold fair skin with the desperation of a street hawker unloading counterfeit luxury goods before the police arrive.

For decades, darker-skinned women were made to feel lesser.

But now, suddenly, brown is fashionable.

Now brown is branding. Now brown is an aesthetic. Now brownness is carefully curated for social media consumption.

And honestly, the hypocrisy of it infuriates me.

Somewhere along the way, identity has stopped being personal and has become performance art. Womanhood itself now seems insufficient unless prefixed by race, colour, ethnicity, or geography—Brown woman, Black woman, White woman, Ethnic woman, Asian woman.

The qualifiers multiply until the actual human being underneath begins to disappear.

Despite what modern celebrity culture increasingly insists upon, I am not a ‘brown woman’. I am not an ‘Asian woman’, a ‘woman of colour’, or an exotic demographic checkbox in the Western world’s diversity spreadsheet.

I am a woman. That is my identity.

My femininity is my label.

Nothing else.

In 2016, Priyanka Chopra called out Hollywood and said, “I don’t like the phrase ‘woman of color.’ I feel like that puts women in a box. I’m a woman, whether I’m white, Black, brown, green, blue, or pink — whatever. I think we need to start looking beyond that. It would be a big win for women, period.” (Quoted via [Refinery29])

At the time, I admired the clarity of that statement. It rejected the idea that women must always be viewed through racial qualifiers first.

What she said took gumption. A deep frustration, born of generational, ancestral marginalization.

Cut to today; things have changed. The same society that once marginalized darker skin now romanticizes and monetizes it. The language has changed, but the fixation remains the same. Earlier, women were reduced for being ‘too brown’. Today, many are celebrated primarily because their brownness is marketable.

Western media, in particular, has transformed identity into an industry. Every public conversation now seems to begin with ancestry, ethnicity, skin tone, or racial categorisation, as though humanity cannot exist without qualifiers attached to it.

Either way, the woman herself becomes secondary.

Success is rarely allowed to stand on its own anymore. It is not simply a woman succeeding; it is a brown woman succeeding. A Black woman succeeding. An Asian woman succeeding. As though pigmentation deserves top billing over personhood.

And yes, many of our own desi celebrities have learnt to monetise this dynamic brilliantly, including Priyanka Chopra Jonas. Yes, sadly, yes.

Of late, she has often leaned into ‘brown girl’, branding because the West consumes it eagerly. In contrast to her statement rejecting brown labelling in 2016, in 2020 she said, “My quest in life, as a producer, is to influx Hollywood with brown people, because we don’t see enough of us. I want to demand leading parts for people who are like me.”

And that contradiction perfectly captures the cultural shift we are witnessing.

Brownness today is profitable. It photographs well. It trends well. It satisfies diversity campaigns, magazine covers, brand narratives, and the Western appetite for visible multiculturalism. An entire ecosystem now exists around packaging ethnicity into consumable aesthetics.

That’s why stances are changing, including Priyanka Chopra Jonas’s.

Recently, my Instagram feed was flooded with reels of so-called ‘desi influencers’ at Coachella* draped in hyper-stylised Indian outfits designed more for aesthetic performance than cultural understanding.

No understanding of the attire. No cultural nuance. No lived familiarity with the traditions they were performing.

For many, ‘desi culture’ appears less inherited and more assembled from Pinterest boards, Netflix stereotypes, and Western media packaging of what ethnicity should look like.

But their greatest selling point?

Brown girl. Desi girl.

That is the USP now.

Not intellect. Not individuality. Not artistry or talent. But pigmentation.

Because melanin sells now.

But while privileged influencers and celebrities turn brownness into a fashionable identity accessory, millions of Indian girls are still being quietly crushed under their sawla rang at home.

Girls are still rejected in arranged marriages for being too sawla, or kaala. Indian families still discuss complexion with disturbing seriousness. Mothers still pass fairness anxieties down to daughters like hereditary trauma. Skin-lightening products continue to flood the market because insecurity remains profitable.

But the irony is that the same society that punishes brownness domestically now fetishizes it internationally.

That is not progress. It is merely the repackaging of prejudice.

‘Brown girl’ has become a commercial category… neatly curated, algorithm-friendly, and guaranteed to generate applause (read: revenue).

But why is womanhood alone no longer enough?

Why must identity now arrive with racial qualifiers attached to it like marketing tags?

I refuse to carry colour as a permanent label stitched onto my existence simply because modern discourse finds race more marketable than humanity.

See me as a woman first. Or, better yet, see me as a person.

Because somewhere between India’s obsession with fairness and the West’s obsession with curated diversity, actual individuality has been lost.

One system told women they were undesirable for being brown. The other rewards them for performing brownness correctly.

Neither feels particularly liberating.

If there is any colour, I am willing to let define me, let it be blue. The colour of outrage.

Because outrage, at least, still feels honest.

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Coachella, formally known as the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival, is one of the largest, most famous, and most profitable music and arts festivals in the world. Held annually over two weekends in the spring at the Empire Polo Club in Indio, California, it features a massive, diverse lineup of artists spanning rock, pop, indie, hip-hop, and electronic dance music (EDM)—source Wikipedia.

Cover image–generated using AI