A sit down with Sunayah Arshad, founder of RASMi - a platform which explores and documents the cultural practices and craftsmanship of Asia via beauty, fashion and art - to learn about traditional suncare rituals and discuss ideas of preservation, custom and inclusivity.
The appeal of traditional beauty rituals has generated a hive of intrigue online, where Gua Sha tutorials, recipes for ayurvedic drinks, and videos declaring products like Amla Oil as ‘holy grail’ are amassing attention from millions of viewers. As traditional beauty practises are attracting curiosity from beyond their native communities and the lines of appreciation and appropriation become increasingly hazy, I sat down with Sunayah Arshad, founder of RASMi - a platform which explores and documents the cultural practices and craftsmanship of Asia via beauty, fashion and art - to learn about traditional suncare rituals and discuss ideas of preservation, custom and inclusivity.
I’ve always been interested in beauty. It’s something I learnt from my mum and my aunties. After school I moved to London to study cosmetic science with the intention to graduate and have my own beauty brand, very hopeful! Cosmetic science gave me such an insight into how the beauty industry works, we were formulating skincare, makeup and haircare in labs, but also exploring the marketing and legislation side, literally everything.
When I graduated, I realised how saturated the beauty industry was. There were so many brands and I realised I didn’t know what I could contribute that would be different.
I did a PR placement year during the course, so went into beauty PR and then transitioned into beauty journalism. After a few years of working at beauty PR agencies and working in-house for beauty brands, I went to work for Hearst. We had our own beauty lab and used to call products in, test them and then write about them. I was there for about three years and I really got to see how the beauty media industry works.
Writing about beauty, I wasn’t bored, but I did start to feel that it was a case of same product, different marketing. It all came from a very Western perception of the world and I just felt that it had stopped appealing to me.
Growing up South Asian, at home we had our own beauty rituals and traditions. Things like using kohl on the eyes, henna on the skin and hair, and hair oiling, which is a ritual going back to my childhood - my mum used to oil my hair every week. These are the traditions that I grew up with but never got to see reflected by the Western world. I just wanted to find a way to link these two worlds.
I think that as I learned more about my heritage and my culture I learned so much about tradition, not only in the South Asian community but the communities of the people around me, from across other parts of Asia and Africa and how different, yet similar our traditions were. From learning about these and the beliefs that came with them I started to love beauty again. A lot of these rituals have religious or spiritual connotations, so through this level of understanding I think beauty just became really interesting again.
About two years ago I started RASMi. It’s a platform to focus on different traditions and cultural practices around Asia, not just in beauty but in craftsmanship too. Craft is something I’m so interested in. I come from a family of jewellers; my dad and both grandads, my uncles, they were all jewellers. They used their hands to make and create these beautiful things. Craftsmanship is so important and strong in South Asian and Asian culture. Living in the West, there’s so much emphasis on technology, everything is advancing at such a fast pace. We don’t really think about these communities and these people who have used their talent and their hands to create the things that were a foundation. I wanted to bring the focus back and to talk about beauty, craft, art and tradition from a more educational perspective.
I essentially just wanted to highlight these things so that there’s more inclusivity, especially around beauty. I’ve learned about some really interesting practices. For example, in Japan, teeth blackening was a thing. That’s a form of beauty. But if we were to walk down the street in London and see someone with black teeth we’d be like huh? I think it’s so fascinating to learn and to know about these traditions, even if we don’t practise them ourselves.
We’ve become so focused on looking at the latest product, trend, ingredient, we don’t stop to look back at these things that actually work and that have a legacy going back years and years.
I love that RASMi was born from viewing beauty as an art form, rather than a commodity.
Yes! A lot of these practices are centuries old and have worked for communities. We’ve become so focused on looking at the latest product, trend, ingredient, we don’t stop to look back at these things that actually work and that have a legacy going back years and years. It’s so interesting to compare traditional and modern beauty rituals.
Via RASMi and through your research, what have you discovered about how suncare is practised across Asia?
The first community that I researched about and posted about on RASMi are a community in the Philippines called Sama-Bajau. They’re a seaborne community; they’ve learned how to hold their breath for a really long time under water and have this really strong relationship with the water. One of their practices is with this paste, it’s called Borak. It’s made of turmeric, rice flour and talcum powder and it’s worn on skin as natural protection against the sun.
Across South Asia, things are very much focused on ayurvedic, holistic remedies. There’s a lot of soothing remedies rather than protective, a lot of focus on how you can heal and repair.
What’s interesting is that these are completely natural remedies. A lot of communities across Asia use these natural ingredients, turmeric is common as well as sesame oil which is embraced as providing really good natural protection and moisturising properties.
Then, in East Asia, there’s this emerging focus on physical protection through clothing and headwear. In Japan they have protective umbrellas, Wagasa. I don’t know if you’ve seen, but there’s a viral video of women in China wearing lotus leaves on their face - people are using nature to create protective face masks. Also in China UV protective clothing is a huge trend at the moment.
In West Asia, where there’s more of a desert climate, there are traditions of protecting against the sun through clothing. For example, the Keffiyeh in Palestine was used as protection from dust, sun, sunburn. An abaya is a form of modest clothing but designed to protect against the sun and keep the body cool too. In Yemen they wear a really distinctive tall hat called ‘madhalla’ made of date palm which keeps you cool.
A lot of communities across Asia, who are more rural and pastoral don’t have much of a concept of SPF. There’s an emphasis on natural things that can be found on the land, or clothing. This said, a lot of the more modernised communities have SPF as integral to their routine, often from a perspective of trying to achieve fair skin.
What stands out to me the most, is that in the Western world we use suncare and SPF as protection. We’re protecting against sun damage, skin cancer, ageing. But across Asia fair, pale skin is still the beauty standard, that’s what many want to achieve. In the West, tanned skin is seen as healthy whereas SPF and suncare across much of Asia is there to keep skin fair which is really interesting, it comes much less from a health perspective.
That was going to be the next question. About how tanned skin has often been associated with working outdoors, and lighter skin has been seen as an indicator of privilege.
Colourism is still a huge thing. I know there’s a lot of products relating to this, like the ‘fair and lovely’ products. They apparently contain SPF, but I don’t know. It’s still a huge thing. It’s hard to weigh in on, but it exists.
I saw on the RASMi Instagram a post about communities using mud and clay to make these mirrored tiles that protect homes from the heat. Are those ingredients used in beauty with the same heat related properties?
Clay, henna and mud are such important materials. Henna especially is used in South Asia to cool the skin down, it’s a soothing remedy; clay as well has natural cooling properties. A lot of communities are super rural, they’re utilising what they have, and that’s the land.
In Myanmar, they use tree bark. It’s ground with water and used on the skin in a similar way that the seaborne community in the Philippines use the turmeric paste. It’s cooling and protective, rural communities use the resources they have.
Exactly, which is interesting because I wonder if extracts from these trees and soils and pieces of the land are used in the sun care products we use.
SPF has become such a buzzword. Online, ‘Asian’ skincare and beauty is gaining so much traction. Korean skincare, Indian haircare secrets. What are your thoughts on how we interact with this kind of content?
It’s super interesting, I think. First of all, I love TikTok. I feel like it’s so educational, I learn so much from it. There’s good and bad points to all of this. I think it’s great in general that other countries, cities, communities are gaining attention and respect for what obviously works for them.
It’s amazing that people are like, “East Asians, they have great skin”. I love that, I love that people make that association.
But I think sometimes these narratives can be problematic because people aren’t taking time to understand the beliefs and traditions surrounding these products or ingredients. I feel like those elements are sometimes lost when we start using them because we don’t know about the history of it all. There are so many spiritual, religious, lifestyle related beliefs around these customs that we don’t even consider when we adopt them, because it’s not important to us. It’s not something that we would pass on or hand down, we are just interested in trying it.
For us, these are just products that are cool to use or another ingredient we think we should be using. But we don’t consider who originally used them, who makes them. Also, it’s often people in the West who don’t belong to the community that are making this content and profiting off it. It’s slightly exploitational and could be considered cultural appropriation, but at the same time is good for awareness. It’s just a question of asking how can we educate beyond these things we are seeing on TikTok and prevent cultural practices being commercialised or commodified, especially by people that they don’t belong to.
I’m with you. It’s so refreshing to see these things. But the nature of TikTok makes it so easy for them to just sit in your brain for sixteen seconds and not think beyond the appeal of wanting to try or test something out.
Generally though I think it’s good. Hair oiling, using henna for example. These things were seen as so different back in the day, but now they’re more accepted and embraced and are promoting inclusivity in the beauty industry. It’s just a case of taking interest in the reasons, beliefs and traditions behind these customs, and looking at it through a decolonial lens so that the heritage and cultural values of those communities aren’t lost.
Blending research, visual storytelling and creative collaboration to consider identities across South, Central, East and West Asia, RASMi welcomes partnerships with creatives and academics through events, workshops, film and media. You can follow RASMi at @rasmiarchive on Instagram, or get in touch with Sunayah at rasmiarchive@gmail.com.
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