Dreaming of Potato Chips During Ramadan

Ramadan Kareem! I've been busy getting ready to go back to school again, but now it's Ramadan, a time for reflection, so I'm back. A lot of people ask me to explain the point of Ramadan. I just looked up the interpretation of a dream I had while oversleeping this morning and I think it about sums up what Ramadan means:

Me: Why am I dreaming of potato chips?
Internet: "To see or eat potato chips in your dream symbolizes your overindulgent behavior."
Me: And waking up convinced I'm thirsty when it's Ramadan and I can't drink water?
Internet: "To dream that you are thirsty symbolizes an unmet need. There is an emotional void in your life. Or you may be seeking inspiration, motivation or just an extra push."

That dream was probably also a reflection of this train of thought I had last night at the iftar party: "Ahhh this biryani is soooo good! I want to eat more! Am I still hungry? No, I'm not hungry but it isssss Ramadan and it's okay if I overeat because I won't be able to eat all day tomorrow or the next day or the next day...."



A lot of people use food to fill emotional needs. A desire to over-indulge in food is probably a sign of or even just direct emotional over-indulgence, making up for something you lack or comforting something that hurts superfluously rather than working to make yourself stronger or heal yourself. Because issues with food often indicate issues with control, the desire to indulge and comfort yourself probably comes out of feeling like you don't have enough control to make the necessary changes in your life. Sometimes people overindulge because they are out of touch with themselves and don't know their actual need. A lot of over-eating is caused by dehydration: by your body telling you it needs water, you being so out of touch with yourself that you don't realize you're thirsty and mistake it for a craving you can't satisfy when a glass of water would've done the trick.

It's not bad to indulge once in awhile but doing it for the wrong reasons will makes things worse. It becomes an emotional crutch. It's not a class A addiction, necessarily, but you may be headed in that direction. Some people may also it to another level, upon realizing their eating habits are control related, by trying to take back that control by starving themselves or making themselves throw up.

I appreciate having a month dedicated to emotional discipline scheduled yearly into my life. To gain power over even yourself, you have to become attuned with yourself, to know and trust yourself enough to peacefully submit to your needs rather than drown them out with a power trip of indulgence. Fasting helps you clear your head of the quick fix, instant gratification approach to life that's so easy to fall into and challenges you to address your deeper needs. It is a call to improve yourself, to change something in your life for the better.

If you fall back into your old ways at the end of Ramadan, just that you completed one fast means you challenged your amount of self-control, won, and came away that much stronger. After a month, you'll hopefully come away with realizations about yourself you can focus on and improve upon or you really like the way one change you made during Ramadan worked in your life and that's definitely enough to call it a success.

If you're a non-Muslim friend or you aren't much interested in Islam, religion, psychology or philosophy, what I've said so far is the basic explanation I have for the month of fasting. If you're interested in a more in-depth explanation, please continue reading.



A lot of people say that the discomfort of being hungry, the pain of absence reminds them to be God conscious. That works for some people, with the explanation that in trying times, you should turn to God because God is the source of all strength and all power. I don't think this is wrong but I am wary of associating God only with pain. Besides, in that line of thinking, it would make sense to deprive yourself an unhealthy amount, believing this would make you even more God conscious. But being unhealthy is forbidden by God because it is too great a challenge for the faith of any believer but the practiced, highly disciplined ascetic/Sufi.

The way I see it, not eating during the hours of light, the hours of awakeness/awareness, is a call to figure out your real needs. You relinquish your option to cloud your sense of fulfillment with physical satisfaction. Doing this for a religious reason, you relinquish that choice/freedom/control to God. Well, you remind yourself that you were given that option by God in the first place by giving it up. By giving it up, you check yourself and make sure you aren't abusing this simple power, because an abuse of power is the classical sign of a failing struggle for more power. By giving it up, paradoxically, you gain control because you gain God's favor and God's favor is expressed with an endowment of power. It may not be the power you want, necessarily. But you have learned to trust, because when you give up your control to someone, it's an act of trust, and you'll have to trust that the power you are given is, if not what you want, what you need.

Fasting is also a lesson in the nature of power, that you must first give it up and gain trust, which is demonstrated through nearly every facet of the Prophet Muhammad's life, whose trademark (or trade name...in his time merchants gained reputation through the names they were given in their trade) was Al-Amin, the trustworthy.

What I'm saying is, if you're like me and you're dreaming of potato chips at the beginning of Ramadan and waking up in a panic thinking you're thirsty, this might be a sign of the path that can take you far in right direction, because you have a long way to go. Let the adventure begin!

Beauty Standards: Elitism and Skin Color

Since I was young, my mother compared my complexion to that of my paler sister and warned me not to get too much sun exposure. She made it a given that lighter skin was beautiful. Though I argued that tans fade, she said sun destroys the skin, so lighter skin became more than a beauty standard, it became a marker of an appreciation of beauty as well. She even mused over whether, among my white friends, my darker skin would lead to my being overlooked. I don't really blame my mom and her views didn't stop me from loving the warm sun on my skin or laughing when my white friends complained that I made them look ghostly pale, but I was surprised to learn that it has become a trend among paler South Asian girls to go tanning.

To provide contrast, I had an experience recently in the "ethnic hair section" at the store, where surprised to find skin lightening products alongside the olive oil shampoo I'd gone there to find. It's not surprising that skin lightening products exist. Fair and Lovely, an ayurvedic "treatment" for dark or uneven skin tone is big in Bangladesh, India and Pakistan. I have heard horror stories of women who used more aggressive means to lighten their skin. My surprise came from my unawareness of the extent to which the standard of whiteness as beauty is prevalent in black culture.

From what I understand, in most cultures, the beauty that is associated with paleness is as an elitist beauty standard. Women of higher classes maintained their prized paleness as a mark of the privilege of not having to work or even go outside if they so chose.

In American slavery, lighter skin color lead to household jobs rather than fieldwork. If a black woman was light enough, depending on where she was, her freedom might even be purchased by a doting white man. Across the board, the illegitimate children of white masters and their black slaves, tended to receive better treatment, as though the whiteness of their philandering fathers made their blackness somewhat forgivable. Again, lightness was an elitist standard enforced though the system of slavery by those in power. It can even be argued that the elitism of skin pigmentation lead to the enslavement of Africans, whose darker skin color made it seem like they were made for manual labor.

Later, the tan was adopted by Europeans and Americans as a mark of imperial life, exotic vacations, and leisurely sun bathing. Though it was a more accessible standard of beauty, the favorable tan did not come from fieldwork, which is still derisively called a farmer's tan or being a redneck. Since fieldwork had largely been replaced by office work, the tan indicated the privilege of relaxation that separated white collar work from blue collar work.

In Islam, though elitism often goes unacknowledged in its perpetuation, there is a prevalent interpretation suggesting that beauty is equivalent with whiteness. In Qur'an and Woman, by Amina Wadud, Dr. Wadud explains the highest beauty is that of a face aglow with the "noor," which means light, of angelic faith. Another contribution to this beauty standard comes from that of the ethereal houri, creatures of heaven who are described as being beyond human in height, having transparent, glowing skin, and virginal bodies that do not age. Both the concept of "noor" and the houri in beauty standards have lead to beauty standards akin with white beauty standards, which Dr. Wadud dismisses due to its inconsideration for black beauty. 

Now with all this in consideration, going back to the tanning of pale South Asian girls, I am interested in where their motivation to do so is from. I have also seen black women obviously tanning themselves at the beach. Though I don't think it comes from an urge to uphold my mother's beauty standards, I am inclined to be critical of this practice. At first, I thought it might be a defiance of the beauty standard that is still prevalent in Bollywood. However, other enduring standards are those of elitism and western luxury, the later of which is especially endorsed by western residing and western educated South Asians.

In India, there is fierce enmity between the wealthy who uphold Bollywood standards and those who uphold western standards. In America, there is similar dissent between wealthy blacks who emulate old money standards and those who choose the flashy expression of new money. Though I'm not sure under which standard black tanners associate themselves, but South Asians in America likely propagate western standards of luxury. Either way, tanning is probably an expression of elitist standards that is definitely laced, ironically, with white/western beauty standards.

Long before I stopped being relieved when my sports tan finally faded and learned to enjoy the color of my skin, I felt slighted by the existence of standards of color and knew that no one should judge others or even themselves by a standard so superficial. Of course, the standard is not superficial in that it's steeped in elitism.

This doesn't mean I'm going to stop enjoying the sun. There is work being to done to prevent what has been called "shadeism." I think my views fall more toward the prevention of children growing up with so much stock in any standards of beauty at all. Sure, the pursuit of such standards, if successful, lead to confidence in one's image. But what people don't realize is that it's the confidence that's beautiful, not the image. So, since I'm not one for the abolition of all standards, rather than the pursuit of beauty standards, which seem rather insecure in their exclusivity alone, how about something more positive that anyone willing can achieve, something that understands difference and can't be evaluated with so little regard? What that might be is probably best left for you to decide.

"In the world, in my body"

Eve Ensler on the interconnectedness of our bodies and world in which we live. Contains mature content.