“Mama, Mama, Mama! Can I have that?” I glanced up in the middle of the French supermarket we were in, meandering through highways of Camembert and baguettes and Côtes du Rhône, to see what Leela was pointing at.

In among a carousel of film merchandising tat, the thing that caught her eye was a blonde ‘Elsa braid’ from the Disney film Frozen.

We’d moved to France when Leela was only eleven months old, to a village on the border with Switzerland that lay in the hinterland between the Alps and the Jura Mountains. For the most part, my kid was surrounded by white people in all-weather jackets and ironed jeans.

What did Leela think about her skin colour, I wondered, that she wanted a blonde hair extension? Did she think she was white? Was it true that children had no idea that people came in different colours?

“I’m happy to buy that for you, but don’t you think it might look a bit odd sandwiched on to your black hair?” I asked, amused. “I wish I had blonde hair.” Leela let out a sigh.

“You mean you want to dye your hair blonde one day?” I replied. It was then my caramel-coloured child told me how she really felt. A confession that made my entire being implode like a dying star running out of energy, collapsing in on itself.

She crinkled her nose, and then cautiously, somehow sensing the impact it might have, revealed this heart-stopping confession: “I want to be peach. I don’t think brown skin is . . .” She searched for the right word, before settling on, “beautiful.”

This was my first inkling that my daughter was not entirely at peace with the way she looked. At first, I wasn’t sure she really meant it – that perhaps she was trying out a thought like kids do, rolling it around in their minds like a marble to see where it lands.

Because it didn’t fit the idea I had of her. Leela has always been a bold and confident kid, who strides through the world like she owns it. The embodiment of female empowerment. So, what’s with this dissatisfaction with her skin? Her words played back to me, this time without the pause. 

“I want to be peach.”

Holy hell. Deep breath, I thought, don’t panic.

“Leela, we come from one of the oldest civilizations in the world. We come from a land where billions pray to mighty warrior goddesses every day. They’re all brown.”

“So people in India aren’t peach?”

“There’s lots of different shades of brown. There’s light brown, dark brown, peachy brown, even. Your skin tone is just another colour in your crayon box.” 

“Hmm,” she shrugged. “I still want the Elsa braid.”

Maybe it was a bit much to expect a four-year-old to engage in a discourse over her ancestry in the middle of Carrefour. I don’t know if what I said was the right way to respond. But I felt weary to my bones to still be living in the kind of world that has drip-fed the notion of white superiority into my girl’s subconscious.

Through predominantly white Disney princesses, to rarely using brown or Black characters in advertising, to Band-Aids that are putty-coloured. Over and over, the drumbeat to our lives is that white is most desirable. Even when we try to resist this indoctrination, it seeps in.

“Mama?” Leela was looking up at me with giant brown eyes, holding up the blonde Elsa braid, tugging on my jacket pleadingly. “Can we buy it then?” I was a million miles away. Leela was slapping the side of my thigh more urgently now.

How can my kid understand that the planets revolve around the sun and yet be unclear on where she fits in?

I have to find a way to make her proud of her heritage and be bold enough to strut into the world knowing who she is, not wishing she was born as something different.

I want her to feel comfortable in her own skin and, to do that, I need to help her reconcile her race and skin colour with her identity as a half-Indian, half-Bangladeshi British kid growing up in France. 

I need to counteract the societal messaging by injecting enough self-worth and belief in her so that she never thinks of herself as lacking in any shape, form or colour.

But to do that, I'm going to have to start with myself…

Read more about Priya's story in M(other)land by Priya Joi, which is available now (Penguin Life, £16.99)

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