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Roma Riaz, Pakistan’s representative at this year’s Miss Universe pageant in Thailand, posted a reel on Instagram addressing people who have been criticising her online for not looking ‘Pakistani enough’. She said she will not “apologise for looking like my people”.

Saying these comments often originated from colourism, which teaches people to “celebrate fairness and forget where [they] came from,” Riaz said she was Pakistani in her roots, her values and “in every shade of [her] skin”.

She said her skin was the same colour as “women who built our homes, our families and carried our nation in their hearts”.

Riaz said she proudly represents Pakistan, but she also represents “a new generation of South Asian women who don’t fit into the narrow boxes of what society thinks we should look like”.

Switching to Urdu for a message aimed at Pakistanis specifically, she asked why people found it so necessary to hate their own people. She said she boasts to the world that Pakistan’s people are the most beautiful thing about the country and the world asks why those same people spread so much negativity about her.

Riaz said she was trying her best to present a positive image of Pakistan to the world and asked people not to let her efforts go to waste. “Everyone is entitled to their opinion, but if you don’t have anything nice to say, please, for the sake of Pakistan’s reputation, don’t say anything,” she said.

In a message to young girls across the country, the Miss Universe contestant said any girl who has been labelled “too dark, too different or too bold” represents Pakistan just as much as anyone else.

Colourism remains a major issue in Pakistani society, where the colour of your skin can change how people act towards you. With attitudes stemming from deeply entrenched vestiges of colonisation and a long-held belief that skin colour is a representation of social class and standing, people with darker skin often get the short end of the stick.

The fact of the matter is, colourist ideas are part of a larger inferiority complex in Pakistani society, which makes people overlook their own people and culture in favour of others they perceive as “more desirable”. This phenomenon is glaringly apparent in the weight we give to English spoken with a British or American accent and how it’s coming to replace Urdu and regional languages in both our homes and schools.

Seeing Riaz break out of this narrow-minded system so publicly and embrace her skin, her culture and her language has been heartwarming. We love seeing beautiful, confident women embracing their beauty and standing up for themselves.

On Monday, she defended her choice to wear a sari to an event as part of the competition, saying the sari was “as Pakistani as the shalwar kameez” and that she would not “let our heritage be rewritten or erased”.

It’s time to stop judging people on the basis of their skin colour and start realising that pulling down a gorgeous woman who is doing her best to represent our country because her skin tone doesn’t fit our very narrow beauty standards is a ridiculous thing to do.

Cover photo: Roma Riaz/Instagram