Myisha Nawar
Maria Qamar grew up in Pakistan where women would routinely apply Fair and Lovely to ‘whiten’ their skin. With her fair complexion, big brown eyes and shiny hazel hair, she would be told that it would do wonders for her skin. Oh my! Hey, it happens here in Bangladesh too! If it’s not Fair and Lovely, it is Ponds White Beauty or maybe a high end whitening cream, depending on how much you are willing to spend to purchase a cream that vaguely promises fairer skin.
Moving on to Maria’s story. Only years after being shown to the doors of Fair and Lovely, she realized that she was just smearing herself with bleach. “I was freaking out,” reminisces the 25-year-old pop artist, who, under the moniker HateCopy has amassed a cult following thanks to her satirical take on society’s obsession with beauty. Qamar’s paintings poke fun at her South Asian background, drawing attention to dangerous Western beauty ideals and the subsequent judgment she sees women place on each other.
Drawing from her personal experiences, Maria came up with an acrylic painting titled Fair N’Lovely to raise awareness about the popular yet unregulated skin lightening beauty product, which has throned onto a global multi-billion dollar industry. “People who put Fair and Lovely on their skin are troubled women who are just screaming on the inside because they don’t like how they look.”
After she moved to Canada with her family, Maria was surprised o find herself being picked on by other kids. She was bullied in reference to her body hair and the color of her skin. Though she “wasn’t bothered at all” by her body hair before the move, it didn’t take long for the insecurities to manifest. Channeling her frustrations, Maria, who previously worked in advertising, focused on hair removal in ‘After Lakhsmi Used Nair’ which depicts a woman with skin irritation on her upper lip and sideburns after using the hair removal cream.
Maria describes her artwork as “a take on Rou Lichtenstein’s graphic view mixed with current themes that revolve around South Asian diaspora”. Her ah-mayyy-ziiing artwork portrays the struggles of dating, the overuse and cultural appropriation of the word Namaste and American politics.