Hania Aamir preaches 'owning your skin' while using an Instagram beauty filter

After years of being ruled by the British, a 'gora complex' has permeated our society, perpetuating a culture of discrimination against people with 'darker' skin. Never mind the fact that we're all just shades of brown.

Lots of people have spoken out against this culture and the latest celebrity to bring it up is Hania Aamir, who recently took to social media to share her two cents on colour shaming and how flawed beauty standards need to be done away with.

"One thing that has been bothering me for a while is colour shaming," the Ishqiya star began, stating how the realisation came to her soon after a friend pointed out she needed to get a tan.

"Gori hai tou chitti hai, dark complexion hai tou gori kyun nai hojati?! [If she has a dark complexion, why doesn't she get fair]. I think it's high time we start having these conversations because... till when will we get insecure about the way we look?" she asked in her video.

"We need to own ourselves, we need to own our skin tones," she added. "We don't have to wear two tones dark foundation or two tone light foundation that oh, these are our beauty standards. These are terrible beauty standards and we don't need to follow them because we have a responsibility for the next generations to come [sic]."

Aamir said if we talk about this phenomenon more and eradicate this mindset now, then our future generations won't have to go through what we're going through today.

Ironically, she throughout the video she had an Instagram filter on her face, one that plumped up her lips, added a rosy tint to her cheeks, elevated her cheekbones and added a row of false lashes — defeating the purpose of everything she said.

It was difficult to not see the hypocrisy in her rant, where phrases such as "accept yourself" were carelessly thrown around like fashion statements instead of self-reflective motivations for fans who could use the help.

Naturally, people were quick to call her out on the double standard, asking her to practice what she was preaching and begin by taking her own advice.

Funnily enough, Aamir removed any acne, scars, wrinkles, lines or pores from her face — features reflective of real raw skin — to preach that people should 'own' themselves. What about owning herself first?

How the excessive use of beauty filters has made people feel uncomfortable in their own skin is a discussion for another time. Blurring out blemishes, flaunting poreless skin and unnaturally narrow noses, and smoothening out your face with the help of filters in order to meet social media expectations is anything but owning your own skin.

As a public figure, it is ignorant to talk about responsibility while simultaneously promoting unrealistic and unattainable standards of beauty.

Hania Aamir, your activism feels disingenuous when your actions are not reflective of your words. It's 2021, and we can only hope that public figures realise the damaging ramifications of their choices, hold themselves accountable and strive to do better when it comes to chanting slogans about body positivity and diversity — and actually believe them while they're at it.