Dear Brown Girls

Iza and Dia are back with our (cold) hot takes about Indian Matchmaking season 2. Spoiler alert: the show has definitely gotten worse! Seema Aunty is back again taking the country by storm, arranging meetups (settle for 70% of what you want, please), styling up parties, and throwing stank face when things don't go her way. We come back to a cast of familiar characters (which... why?) and whole host of new ones to watch awkwardly search for love with the help of India's best matchmaker. 

Its been a busy summer, and we've got some exciting life updates to share with you that will make even the aunties rejoice!

Delve into the weeds about the particular relationship brown women can have with beauty and their own bodies. We're hairier than we expected (looking at you, rogue chin hair), plagued with permanent under-eye bags or bi-coloured lips, and grew up taking oily slicked-back braids to school.  Sometimes it feels like a lot. We chat about learning to love our own beauty, and recontextualizing it with our own standards rather than others, and embracing the cultural traditions of beauty that we've inherited. (But not the bad ones! Looking at you, colourism!)

Do your parents also keep all their savings in gold? When asked what they have saved for the future, they respond, "Well, that's what you're for, aren't you?" Iza and Dia dig into what it's like growing up as an immigrant, and how that has affected our relationship with money as adults. We ask deep-hitting questions like, "Why do I feel bad buying something for full price?" and "Is it normal to want to keep all your money under your bed?" At the end, we tell you how you can bid for our new, unique, one of a kind NFT! Just joking, what's an NFT?

This episode Iza and Dia dig into our experiences moving out (temporarily or for good) and braving the dangers that come with it. Namely, actually moving out, and telling your parents you're moving out -- both equally treacherous. There's judgy brown realtors, carbon monoxide poisoning, and of course parental disappointment -- what more could you want?

In this month's episode, we sat down to discuss Netflix's Al-Rawabi School for Girls. If you haven't seen it, go watch it now! Both beautiful and dark, it follows the lives of school girls in Jordan, and leaves much to be discussed about friendship, trauma, and where the lines of justice and vengeance blur. Note: This episode contains spoilers. 

Welcome back to Dear Brown Girls, season 2! We're back and more tired than ever! 

In this episode, we look back at what it's been like to create a podcast in the midst of a pandemic. We talk remote podcasting and editing woes (this is the first episode we've recorded in person!), our favourite and least favourite episodes of the first season, and what it's been like to do collaborations with the amazing brown women we've met because of the podcast! We rope that into how both our lives have changed in drastic and different ways because of the coronavirus pandemic, with Dia moving to work from home (forever? when will this end?) and Iza's work as a nurse more contentious than ever before.