mehreenkasana:

There are dark skinned Pakistanis and there are light skinned Pakistanis. Some Pakistanis are Punjabi while some Pakistanis are Pashtun. Some Pakistanis are Baloch while some Pakistanis are Sindhi. Some are even Siraiki, Brushiski, Gujjar, Balti, Jutt, Hazara, Chitrali, Kailash, Afro-Sindhi, Warraich, Persian Hunza, Hindko and a few hundred other identities. They’re all Pakistanis. Some Pakistanis have dark brown eyes while others have blue or green eyes. While the charged and critical discourse around the whitewashing of Pakistani women remains alive for a legitimate reason (and should be encouraged to dismantle racist beauty standards), people tend to automatically ignore the basic and biological fact that millions and millions of Pakistanis are light skinned by default. Does that make them any better than dark skinned Pakistanis? No. Should they be given special treatment? No. But do they exist and deserve the right to be acknowledged as Pakistanis without a non-Pakistani popping up and giving a biased observation like, “I thought all Pakistanis are dark”? Yes, yes and yes. Pakistan is so insanely diverse because of its history with other civilizations migrating and settling here before it was even politically conceived that it is not only impossible and illogical to conjure up a specific kind of Pakistani physical image, but it is also downright ridiculous and disrespectful to Pakistanis.

Is this some sort of mind blowing information that people cannot seem to wrap their minds around? Pakistan is massively rich when it comes to its ethnic makeup. I’m a Pakistani woman whose maternal and paternal sides of the family have dark and light skinned people. And guess what? It’s like that in most Pakistani families.

Pakistan is not a monolith. End of story.