Read the stories told by the women themselves
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Gradient is based off the photograph and not actual skin color given the variations of lighting, time, camera, etc.
“I like my skin color. I’m at the point where I think it's beautiful as well. Something that I like to do is I like to describe it as Cambodian girls making it out there and just admire how far we’ve come in terms of that.”
January 23rd, 2022
“…[e]very single day. They were blunt with it. Wherever I went, I would get called ‘dark, fat, ugly, or freak.’ I never fit in. [I don’t think I’m pretty,] no. I’m just too dark.”
May 4th, 2023
“...[T]hey’re like, ‘If you want to be married, you should focus on lightening your skin.’”
June 22nd, 2021
“If you go to Khmer stores and it's like you see lined up behind the register all the skin creams and I remember the pink bottle, the pink one.”
November 28th, 2023
“...My mom has taught me to be proud of who I am and how I look, and to never let how other people see me affect me...I did grow up a little insecure, but now I've learned to embrace it and love Khmer culture.”
April 5th, 2021
“She said, ‘no matter what you do, you still look dirty.’”
September 9th, 2024
“I think Khmer people need to be on their own wavelength, doing what they want to do, and I think that as soon as we start to internalize those, Khmer people everywhere are going to be a lot more happy.”
April 7th, 2021
“I love my skin. I wish sometimes I was not so dark, I love going outside to play, and like I said earlier, I hated to discipline myself not to go out so much or not to be out for so long.”
August 26th, 2021
“They would [ask] me, ‘What are you?’ I was like, ‘I’m Filipino and Cambodian,’ and they were like, ‘Oh, you know that Cambodians are the Blacks of Asia?’”
April 9th, 2021
“Whenever we can’t dress up to par with others or have a skin color like mine, we don’t feel that we should walk near others.”
April 6th, 2021
“I thought it was normalized too, like the constant talking about skin tone, skin color…it's happened so much that you lose count of how many times that has been mentioned because it's just so normal for [my family].”
January 22nd, 2023
![“I feel like when you come over [from Cambodia] and you're lighter, you're either owning a jewelry shop or restaurant, just like top‒you're gonna multiply that money. But you come like my skin color, I think you got to work hard for everything that …](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/605e0f1232a9142aed48a05d/1621193822283-IONWDAT3DRXODA68YRVG/Lyda+Yi+Main+Photo+%281%29.jpg)
“I feel like when you come over [from Cambodia] and you're lighter, you're either owning a jewelry shop or restaurant, just like top‒you're gonna multiply that money. But you come like my skin color, I think you got to work hard for everything that you own.”
May 16th, 2021
“I wrote a play for Khmer club once and the main character’s line was... ‘My mom says that the darker you are, the more the Gods love you,’ because the more protection you have from the sun.”
April 4th, 2021
“It hasn't bothered me as much anymore, but if my family does anything to my daughters, it brings back that hurt because as a child, I felt that pain.”
April 3rd, 2021
“…[T]here's a disconnect of that possibility that Khmer folks can attain this and not associate it with being Khmer.”
September 22th, 2022
“It took me until now to really develop my own definition of beautiful, and get past what I grew up thinking what beautiful was because I was shunning from it.”
April 8th, 2021