Colorism in Maria
Hello Vert Berry Family, I hope you are all doing fine. This post is going to touch on colorism portrayed on a popular Kenyan television show by the name Maria.
I hope you enjoy this post.
Maria
Maria is a Kenyan television show that is usually aired almost daily. The main character by name Maria is a dark skinned girl who comes from humble beginnings, she speaks ‘sheng’ (Kenyan slang) and she is generally ‘rough’. She then catches the eye of a young man (Luwi) from an affluent background and he upgrades her.
In the midst of the upgrade, a light skinned girl playing the rival character by the name Sofia comes and steals her shine from Luwi. To be honest, I do not watch this show consistently but this is a basic part of the story.
I want to you keenly look at how Sofia has been portrayed against Maria.
Where the colorism comes in
I am conversant that people take roles on how good they are at delivering the role and ‘bringing it to life.’ I have no issue with the roles that these two gorgeous ladies played in this show.
The colorism in this comes with the portrayal of dark skinned women. We are generally portrayed as low maintenance and rough, a stereotype which is detrimental to dark skinned women. This makes people think they can mishandle us because we are ‘too strong’ and even makes people like Kevin Hart publicly state that dark skinned girls can take punches better than dark skinned women.
The fact that a light skinned lady comes in to ‘take over’ also bears subliminal colorist sentiments.
Solution
It would be more helpful too see dark skinned women take roles which have the ladies well put together and be represented in a more sophisticated light.
A change in narrative which pushes for dark skinned women not only taking the lead roles but also being spruced up can help a little dark skinned girl watching a show know that dark skinned women can look a certain type of way apart from the unkempt and rough lady.
Do you know of a Kenyan show in which a dark skinned lady plays the lead role and is actually well put together? If you do not know any, would you love to see a change?
Kindly drop your comments. See you on the next post.
Thankyou so much, I love you all.
Vert Berry 