Desirability is not neutral

Dear men, don’t rule us out

This week, I hand over to

Leela Lakhani

who I had the pleasure of meeting on a recent trip to Toronto. She spends her free time writing to ‘connect cultural dots with sincerity and a solid dose of side eye.’ You can find her Substack here.

Desirability is not neutral

If you’re a daughter of a Desi household, in your 30s, growing up in the West, you too might have been told to get a boyfriend or asked, ‘Why can’t you just find a partner?’ Yes, I would be lying if I said I didn’t want my own Rahul from K3G to come and sweep me off my feet. But I’ve begun to wonder if the real issues of my singledom aren’t me…

Like many single women, I’ve asked myself the tough questions: Are my standards too high? Am I being too picky? Am I not pretty enough? Slim enough? Demure enough?

Growing up in a city as multicultural as Toronto, I’ve also asked myself if I should be more culturally open when it comes to love. Although I’ve never ruled out an interracial relationship, I have a natural pull towards wanting someone who might understand my lived cultural experience — like the haram vs halal ratio (ifykyk). But does someone with my lived cultural experience want me?

I’m struck by the number of times I’ve approached a local brown man only to hear he exclusively dates white girls or has a preference for East Asian girls. Recently, frustratedly, I joked with a brown male friend that, ‘If brown men are willing to defy their parents, they’ll date anyone but a brown girl. And if they’re not, they only want a specific type of brown girl that their mother would approve of.’

I thought this ‘preference’ might have just been a phase of our early dating years — a recurring pattern my brown female friends and I started to notice at university — but it still seems to be ongoing over a decade later as we come to terms with the sad reality in our thirties.

So why aren’t our South Asian* counterparts choosing us?

*and non South Asian

Here are a few theories I believe might be playing out, often subconsciously:

There’s an imbalance of progress

South Asian women are the most educated, ambitious, and emotionally intelligent we’ve ever been. Meanwhile, the pool of equally progressive, emotionally mature, and relationship-ready South Asian men feels smaller. Those men who do ‘have it all’ often have the privilege of dating within and outside of their culture. Those still trying to ‘catch up’ to us, often find high-achieving women intimidating and there’s real misalignment in expectations and efforts, and lack of mutual respect.

Desirability is not neutral

Attraction is shaped by culture, media, society, and not just personal chemistry. Colonialism — coupled with decades of Hollywood, Bollywood (and insert all other -woods here) imagery — has built and reinforced racial hierarchies of attraction that continue to wreak havoc in society today. These systems idealise proximity to whiteness where lighter skin, high cheek bones, and slimmer frames continue to be idealised. If you fit that mould, you can date across races. If not, you’re limited.

And it’s not just your colour that’s being judged for its desirability; there are Western ideals of femininity to contend with. East Asian women, for example, are often portrayed as more delicate, demure, and submissive. In contrast, Black and South Asian women are often expected to prove their softness to be worthy of romantic attention — there’s no space for the spice and nakhre of bold South Asian women. It goes without saying that these stereotypes don’t benefit any woman of any race.

There’s power in who you’re seen with

For some diaspora brown men, dating outside of their race might be a status symbol. Instead of choosing to stand beside someone with shared history and ambition, they choose to culturally distance themselves to prove they’ve made it ‘here’. They’ve assimilated and broken away from the binds of culture. To opt out, is to have levelled up. On the flip side, brown women are taught to preserve and uphold their culture. To opt out, is to have sold out.

There’s a change in emotional expectations

Many South Asian men were raised coddled by mothers who carried the emotional and domestic weight of the household. These same men then grow up expecting the same from their partner: she has to be pretty, educated, accomplished and, of course, accommodating and willing to do most of the heavy lifting — emotionally, domestically, relationally. If a brown woman challenges that dynamic and wants a more balanced relationship, she’s dismissed as ‘too much’ or ‘too opinionated’ by her partner, not to mention the wider community of family, in-laws and, sometimes, even friends. That same expectation is not held of non brown women dating brown men — in fact, quite the opposite.

It feels sad. At its core, when someone who shares your history, language, and culture doesn’t see you as someone worth choosing, it cuts deeper than if they had no shared commonality. Not because they owe you love, but because they didn’t even consider it.

You might have been through, or be going through, levels of grief like I did. It can look like:

• Feeling invisible in spaces where you should be the most seen

• Feeling like you’re measured against whiteness and/or exoticism, and always coming up short

• Feeling let down by those who could have shared a life with you but won’t try because of ‘preference’

• Feeling like you’re losing a one sided battle

But here’s what I keep reminding myself: I’m not losing because I refuse to play a rigged game. I know that self worth does not come from being chosen by someone else. I don’t need to shrink, mould, or mute myself to fit someone else’s comfort. Discovering the systemic influences around South Asian dating dynamics has helped me release the weight of wondering, ‘What’s wrong with me?’ Because the answer is nothing. I’m just trying to find love in a world that hasn’t always taught others how to see us clearly. And I’m not alone, I can name multiple friends, brown and not, who are navigating the same emotional terrain.

Yet I remain guardedly optimistic to love. I’m widening the pool of who I want to receive love from. At a certain point, it isn’t just about my preferences — it’s math. Based on numbers alone, being more culturally open starts to feel less like a personal evolution and more like a statistical necessity. But I’m unwavering in how I want to feel in a partnership. All I can do is keep showing up as the kind of partner I’d want, even if the journey takes longer than the little girl I once was imagined.

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Thank you to

Leela Lakhani

. Based and raised in Toronto, with East African Gujju roots, she now writes to interrogate culture over on her recently birthed newsletter The Soft Audit.

If you’d like to write for Brown Bodies — whether in reply to this piece or something else entirely — you can slide into my Substack DMs, email anisah@brownbodies.co or reply to this email!