Jasmine Muller: “I don’t want to detract from fully brown women”
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Jasmine Muller: “I don’t want to detract from fully brown women”
The presenter on learning to love her heritage
Hi, welcome back to Mixed Messages! This week, I speak to presenter and content creator, Jasmine Muller, who is of Indian, Danish, American and Iranian heritage. With such a mix of ethnicities and having lived all over the world, I wanted to hear about Jasmine’s journey to accepting her brownness.
How would you define your ethnicity?
I usually say I’m a mix, or mixed. How I view my heritage is always changing, I tend to pick one brown and one white aspect of my identity. Indian-Danish is my go-to as they resonate most with me in terms of culture. Denmark is my dad’s side and where all of his family live. I’ve gone there every summer since I was a kid and always spend Christmas there.
My Gujarati mum’s dad was Iranian, but I never got to meet him. My mum was also born in Uganda, like many South Asians who were born across Africa.
I did an ancestry test and the results were so different to what I expected; it said 50% South Asian, mainly Gujarati, 50% French, German, Danish and Jewish, with a little bit of Spanish too. I think everybody is a lot more mixed than they know.
Does the question “where are you from?” ever bother you?
No, but I understand why it does for others. I grew up in Dubai before moving to the UK, and hearing how I speak, people have a lot of questions. I end up telling them my life story to explain it. So much of who I am is all the places and cultures I’ve lived in, so to me, it’s just like someone asking what I do for a living.
How has your sense of identity shifted over time?
When I was younger, I didn’t connect to the brown part of myself. My mum was always very open about the struggles she’d faced as a fully brown woman, so maybe that’s what stopped me wanting to embrace my whole self.
Growing up in Dubai, I was around a lot of white expats. I tried to push the fact that I was Danish, American and then British to fit in, but I still had brown features. As a kid, when I was called ‘paki’, it wasn’t the slur that upset me, but the fact that I was being seen as brown. I’m not in that place now - today I want nothing more than for people to see me as all the things I am.
How did you start to embrace your Indian heritage?
As I got older, I started to develop that appreciation for people who are marginalised because of their gender, sexuality or race. I realised that I’d repressed that part of myself. Before, I didn’t want anything to do with Indian food, speaking Gujarati or even visiting India.
Now, I’m trying to undo all of that by learning those recipes and understanding my heritage. I feel like I’ve become so much more myself and feel freer. After a confusing identity crisis, I’m happy with the way that I am and the way that I look - even my Iranian nose.
Still, I’m cautious about not speaking on behalf of fully brown women. I recently posted something about hair removal, and I had this wave of panic that people would be offended that I’m speaking about brown struggles as a mixed woman. I know I have the benefit of white privilege, so I don’t want to detract from other people’s stories.
If you could define your mixed experience in one word, what would that be?
Untraditional.
Next week, I’ll be talking to the author of Hijab and Red Lipstick, Yousra Imran. Subscribe to get Mixed Messages in your inbox next Monday!
Mixed Messages is a weekly exploration of the mixed-race experience, from me, Isabella Silvers. My mom is Punjabi Indian (by way of East Africa) and my dad is White British, but finding my place between these two cultures hasn’t always been easy. That’s why I started Mixed Messages, where each week I’ll speak to a prominent mixed voice to delve into what it really feels like to be mixed.
Jasmine Muller: “I don’t want to detract from fully brown women”
Thankyou. Writing about my own mixed identity before it's too late. My father's family came from Barbados... My mother's family came from Warsaw. I grew up in London. Mixed fruit. Love the book. Thanks for this website.
Loved this. Thanks Jasmine. I lived in Barbados for a little while myself, and love the place and find it fascinating. It's so interesting to see how being mixed felt there. Thanks for sharing.