If you regularly use social media, especially Instagram, there’s a thin chance that you have missed photos and videos of a woman dressed in a red-coloured saree selling roses on the streets. Turns out, that she is not someone who sells roses on the streets to earn a living but an influencer who painted herself dark and acted as a poor person to garner few likes and comments. The influencer even shared the entire makeup process on her Insta handle and is now receiving severe backlash from netizens.
“So this person on Instagram darkens her colour and pretends to be poor.. for what?? This is insane??” wrote a Twitter user, Rutuja, while tweeting two images. In the first image, the influencer darkened her face and body, pretending to be a poor woman selling roses on the streets, while the other shows her natural skin tone.
Take a look at the tweet below:
The post was shared on October 20 and has since received close to 7,000 likes and several reactions. Many even pointed out how worrisome it is to associate dark skin with poverty.
“Not just photos, there are videos of her selling flowers and all?! What in the world,” commented an individual. “It’s offensive. When I saw the video from the left side, I was like such a beautiful girl. When I saw the tag and realised it’s makeup, I felt ‘naah! Not a beautiful person’. Isn’t it racist to think that dark skinned people are poor,” posted another. “Damn!! What kind of people live in this world!! She is dressing up as poor woman, darkening her face and body, putting heavy make up to look a black poor lady!! All for what, some likes and popularity,” wrote a third. “She literally has a whole bunch of reels filmed of her pretending to be a poor person selling flowers. This definitely isn’t a before-after thing,” shared a fourth.
