Dear Brown Girls

Since the death of Mahsa Amini, protests have erupted all over Iran, with citizens calling for an end to the government's Morality Police and demanding "Woman, Life, Freedom." Images of women cutting off their hair and burning their hijabs have made their way to the world, and the world has reacted. We sat down to discuss how we can best amplify the voices of Iranians, along with some background on the Iranian government, our thoughts on the French police comparisons, and why we feel that Muslims and Republicans alike need to stay in their lane.  Episode Cover Art Credit: Iran protests: Leader praises force quashing dissent | CTV News

Iza and Dia are back with our (cold) hot takes about Indian Matchmaking season 2. Spoiler alert: the show has definitely gotten worse! Seema Aunty is back again taking the country by storm, arranging meetups (settle for 70% of what you want, please), styling up parties, and throwing stank face when things don't go her way. We come back to a cast of familiar characters (which... why?) and whole host of new ones to watch awkwardly search for love with the help of India's best matchmaker.

Its been a busy summer, and we've got some exciting life updates to share with you that will make even the aunties rejoice!

The crisis in Ukraine has shaken the world. We've seen the plight of Ukrainian refugees fleeing their country, and how the world has come together to help. We've been reading and watching the news, and kept noticing this tendency of reporters to compare this refugee crisis to others in the past... as if we must pit them together . This compelled us to dig deeper, and what we found wasn't good. Join us as we dig into how refugees are being differentiated, and whether it's coming from Eurocentrism, racism, or something else, and how this discrimination has found its way into the legislation of countries that have received refugees. They've already caused harm, and will continue to do so if nothing changes. We ask for all refugees to be treated better!  Note: This episode was recorded in the beginning of April, roughly 1 month after the war in Ukraine began. Some statistics may be out of date. Where to help: Ukraine (United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees) Afghanistan (International Rescue Committee) Syria (United Nations International Children's Emergency Fund) Iraq (Non-violent Peace Force) Yemen (Doctors Without Borders) Sources available at: dearbrowngirls-refugees.carrd.co

Delve into the weeds about the particular relationship brown women can have with beauty and their own bodies. We're hairier than we expected (looking at you, rogue chin hair), plagued with permanent under-eye bags or bi-coloured lips, and grew up taking oily slicked-back braids to school. Sometimes it feels like a lot. We chat about learning to love our own beauty, and recontextualizing it with our own standards rather than others, and embracing the cultural traditions of beauty that we've inherited. (But not the bad ones! Looking at you, colourism!)

Do your parents also keep all their savings in gold? When asked what they have saved for the future, they respond, "Well, that's what you're for, aren't you?" Iza and Dia dig into what it's like growing up as an immigrant, and how that has affected our relationship with money as adults. We ask deep-hitting questions like, "Why do I feel bad buying something for full price?" and "Is it normal to want to keep all your money under your bed?" At the end, we tell you how you can bid for our new, unique, one of a kind NFT! Just joking, what's an NFT?

This episode Iza and Dia dig into our experiences moving out (temporarily or for good) and braving the dangers that come with it. Namely, actually moving out, and telling your parents you're moving out -- both equally treacherous. There's judgy brown realtors, carbon monoxide poisoning, and of course parental disappointment -- what more could you want?

In this month's episode, we sat down to discuss Netflix's Al-Rawabi School for Girls. If you haven't seen it, go watch it now! Both beautiful and dark, it follows the lives of school girls in Jordan, and leaves much to be discussed about friendship, trauma, and where the lines of justice and vengeance blur. Note: This episode contains spoilers.

Every single one of us, at some point in our life, has been on the receiving end of the vicious “you look… healthy” comment by some so called well meaning aunty. Whether we're deemed too fat, too skinny, too provocative, or too boring, we've been put to war with our bodies for too long. In this episode, we chat with Trish of Sherni London and discuss the brown communities obsession with policing women's bodies, and how Trish is using her business to change the narrative and help brown women of all sizes love their bodies. Find Trish at @shernilondon on Instagram or at shernilondon.com.

Welcome back to Dear Brown Girls, season 2! We're back and more tired than ever! In this episode, we look back at what it's been like to create a podcast in the midst of a pandemic. We talk remote podcasting and editing woes (this is the first episode we've recorded in person!), our favourite and least favourite episodes of the first season, and what it's been like to do collaborations with the amazing brown women we've met because of the podcast! We rope that into how both our lives have changed in drastic and different ways because of the coronavirus pandemic, with Dia moving to work from home (forever? when will this end?) and Iza's work as a nurse more contentious than ever before.

To wrap up Dear Brown Girls' first season, we decided to try to answer the question that's been haunting us all along- why are we (brown girls all over the world) so damn tired? To answer this question we had the opportunity to chat with Nancy Bahl, a PhD candidate in clinical psychology and general brown girl extraordinaire. Nancy breaks down why mental health issues are rampant in our culture, the unhealthy behaviors that are normalized in our communities, and how they manifest and affect us deep into adulthood. Thankfully, Nancy doesn't just leave us hanging in the dark realms of our unconscious, and shares her toolbox of strategies you can try at home, as well as how best to look for a practitioner that fits you. Resources: https://self-compassion.org/ https://www.sasmha.org/ https://www.healingincolour.com/ https://www.inclusivetherapists.com/

So... we need to talk about Palestine. There aren't two sides, it's not just a conflict between two countries, and most of all, it's not too complicated for us to educate ourselves. After all, we were able to do it and we want to make it easier for you. It's the same thing we've been seeing time and time again: a struggle of the oppressed against a powerful oppressor. In this episode, we take the evictions in Sheikh Jarrah and the ensuing violence and give it the context it needs. We go over the creation of Israel in 1948 (obviously the British were involved - we know how they love dividing people

You've all heard about the infamous Indian Soap Operas, but prepare to learn about a different, yet equally troubling, industry. Pakistani soap operas, or "dramas" as they're so lovingly called, are equal parts addicting and horrifying. While the endless emotional blackmail and the weird cousin romances might be fun to watch, there's something uncomfortable simmering beneath the surface. If art reflects reality, what kind of truths can we learn about our culture from these spiralling stories? Is there a deeper problem here? Or did Dia and Iza have a 50 minute hissy fit for no reason?

How much internalized racism do we really carry with us? This episode we cringe at the ways that we internalized racism as children and even as adults, the line between criticizing your own culture and attacking it, as well as why we learn to desire validation from white people. We then map out steps to free ourselves from internalized racism, and because we like baby steps, we'll start by taking back our own names. Dia's Book Recommendations Here's a few books I recommend if you want to read books by people of colour. I've made an effort to include different genres, as well as stories of both the diaspora and those in the motherland. Share your book recommendations to us @_dearbrowngirls! I Am Malala - Malala Yousafzai (Autobiography / Activism) Persepolis - Marjane Satrapi (Graphic Novel / Autobiography) Things Fall Apart - Chinua Achebe (Postcolonial Classic) Interpreter of Maladies - Jhumpa Lahiri (Short Story Collection) We Should All Be Feminists - Chimamanda Ngozie Adichie (Essays on Feminism) The Arrival - Shaun Tan (Graphic Novel / Immigration) Pride, Prejudice, and Other Flavors - Sonali Dev (Romance) Akata Witch - Nnedi Okorafor (Children's Fantasy) Pachinko - Min Jin Lee (Multigenerational Epic) Why Not Me? - Mindy Kaling (Comedy / Autobiography) Season of Migration to the North - Tayeb Salih (Postcolonial Classic) *Addendum from Dia: I mentioned that reading in your native language can be mentally freeing because you aren't consuming the Western and colonial ideologies that are baked into languages like English. But that's only a privilege you have if you know your mothertongue or are able to learn it. Reading books in translation are a wonderful alternative that still maintains Eastern ideas and worldviews. Not everyone butchers "translations" like Coleman Barks did to Rumi. Furthermore, there's also power in colonized/brown/black voices taking the language of their oppressor and repurposing and subverting it to tell our own stories -- and that's why many of the books I've recommended here are books written natively in English.

In today's podcast, Shamaila Butt, a local entrepreneur, marketer, and MBA-in-the-making speaks to us about the challenges of working in the corporate world while facing discrimination and scrutiny from both inside and outside the South Asian community, and how we can work to create our own spaces as brown women.  To find out more about Shamaila's work, find her social activism platform @wearebeti on Instagram, business to support WOC entrepreneurs at entreprenherinc.com, or reach out to her on LinkedIn.  This is the first of our In Her Own Words series, where we highlight inspiring brown women, their varied experiences, and what we can learn from them. 

This isn't a universal brown trait, but we felt remiss not to discuss the elephant in the room: Dia is Indian while Iza is Pakistani. The conflict between the two countries has been a lifelong constant for both of us. Whether the countries are going to war or facing off during a cricket match, their rivalry is well documented and going strong. In this episode, we dive into our theories as to why partition happened, try our hand at British accents (spoiler: they're outrageously bad), and examine how its legacy continues to affect us to this day. Disclaimer: We've marked this episode explicit due to liberal amounts of cursing, rage, and offensive British accents. You've been warned!

It's February 2021, and we're still in lockdown. So join Dia and Iza as they reminisce about better times, grieve over trips that could have been, and swap travel stories. More importantly, tune in to learn how to trick your brown parents into letting you travel and escape the “you can travel when you're married” trap.

If there's one universal experience that all brown girls can relate to, it's the suffering we all face at the hands of our beloved Aunties. You can run, you can hide, but none of us escape unscathed. In this episode we dramatically delve into our aunty traumas, and try to finally move past the horrific experiences they put us through, and discuss how we can avoid becoming the aunties we love to hate.

If you're brown, you probably have been told to stay out of the sun at one point or another for fear of your skin getting darker. This episode we tackle where the colourism in our communities comes from, share stories from different women about their personal experiences, and try to shed light on a topic that is too often dismissed. Thank you to the friends that generously shared their stories for this episode. Discussed article: How protests led to a critique of Bollywood's colorism and a reckoning for South Asians (Sakshi Venkatraman, NBC, 2020)

Every parent of a brown girl has two dreams... for their daughter to be married to a doctor, or for her to be a doctor. But what happens if your heart desires something else? Join us as we discuss our personal experiences of disappointing our parents, the importance of carving out your own path in life despite the uncertainty, being brown in the workplace, and naturally getting unsolicited advice from the aunties at every turn.

Whether it's questions about if you're bald under there, or being asked why you're not wearing it the right way, people brown and not brown just won't leave a hijabi alone. This episode, we uncover (hahah sorry) the realities of wearing a hijab day to day in face of modest fashion, ignorance, and societal expectations, and what it's actually like to be the woman inside.

The one where we suck it up and talk about sex and why brown people don't talk about it, all while sharing unflattering anecdotes about the most wonderful period of our lives: puberty. Resources for Sex Education: Sexplanations https://www.youtube.com/user/sexplanations Crash Course Biology: Reproductive System (Parts 1-4) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RFDatCchpus Gender and Sexuality: Diversity and Inclusion in the Workplace https://www.coursera.org/learn/gender-sexuality South Asian Sexual & Mental Health Alliance: http://www.sasmha.org

An overview of the Farmers Protests happening in India. Ways to Help https://linktr.ee/dearbrowngirls Resources Foreign Policy: India's Farmers Come Out in Force Against Modi (Fahad Shah, Nov 28 2020) CTV News: Modi tries to placate Indian farmers protesting new laws (Sheikh Saaliq, Nov 30 2020) Indian Express: Farmers Protest - Who are the farmers marching to Delhi, and why? (Varinder Bhatia, Dec 2 2020) Tribune India: More support, aid pouring in from NRIs for protesting farmers at Delhi (Sukhmeet Bhasin, Nov 29 2020) The Second Angle: How Are The Farmer's Protest In India A Feminist Issue? (Shahzeen Khan, Oct 16 2020) Times of India: Farmers' protest explained in 5 charts (Times of India, Nov 30 2020) Hindustan Times: MSP, APMC buzzwords in controversy over bills (Zia Haq, Sep 20 2020)

Welcome to our third podcast, in which we will relive all the traumas of living in a diaspora in pain staking detail. From recollecting experiences of what it felt like growing up during 9/11 as a Muslim, to awkward dance classes, to the lunch room bullies who made fun of our tin foil wrapped lunches- you'll find all of that, and more, here. It's not completely depressing, we promise. Enjoy. 

Are you looking for love? Discover Sima Aunty from Mumbai's best kept secrets to everlasting joy: flexibility, goat yoga, and the occasional face reading. Join us as we unpack the highly controversial Netflix show Indian Matchmaking, and delve into how accurate a depiction of the arranged marriage matchmaking process it really is. Not to mention answer all those questions that are keeping everyone awake at night: What's with Aparna's weird obsession with the Bolivian Salt Flats? Why does Sima Aunty from Mumbai keep consulting the shittiest face reader on the planet? And will Akshay ever be able to carry a conversation?

Welcome to the first episode of our podcast, where we over-explain ourselves and try to make a point or two. In this episode, we discuss how hard it is to be a brown woman in this day and age, and what a shitty job the media does representing women of color. Mostly it's just us gushing about our love of Mindy Kaling, ranting about how badly hijabis are depicted on TV, and begging the haram police not to come for us. We promise it only gets better from here (because it can't get worse).