'Zara Abid embraced her dark-skin, she fought for it'

It’s been a week since the ill-fated PK 8303 crashed in a residential area of Karachi just a minute before landing. The Karachi bound flight had 99 passengers and 8 cabin crew members.

97 passengers passed away in the fateful incident. One of them was model Zara Abid. Soon after the news broke, condolences for the 28-year-old model poured in as the fashion fraternity lost an integral part of the industry.

Many took to social media and celebrated her life and career. Former supermodel and the PR mogul, Frieha Altaf remembered Zara as someone “who was very well-mannered and very polite.”

In a recent interview with BBC Asian Network, Altaf shared, “She took direction very well whenever I have worked with her on fashion weeks. She was an excellent model.”

Soon after she was informed about Abid’s passing away, the actor shared, “Immediately for me, it was that we have to celebrate this girl.”

Talking about her life and career, Altaf added, “Zara struggled. You know in Pakistan there is this conception of beauty which is still the fair-skinned, very tall girl, with long hair and Zara was dark-skinned. She had done some shoots where she had embraced her skin colour and she was trolled for it.”

Altaf continued, “She had stood up to it and I think that is why she had won the award for the Best Model and she made it to Hello – Top 100 People in the country because she was standing up to this shaming of dark skin in Pakistan and saying, ‘I love my skin colour’, and so she actually struggled to make her mark but she did it.”

Social media was abuzz with insensitive comments after Abid’s demise made headlines.

“That’s right. I think people are quite insensitive. There are people who still think that the entertainment and fashion industry is incorrect and you’re immodest if you wear certain clothes even if it is a job,” the Parey Hut Love star shared.

“I think the majority of the people will remember Zara for the fact that she didn’t give in. Sometimes, it hurts when you get labelled, when somebody is telling you, ‘you’re not beautiful just because you are dark-skinned.”

Altaf revealed that Zara had shared that she was photoshopped in three of her photo shoots to be lighter-skinned. “She said, ‘I don’t agree with this’,” the PR guru recalled. “So, this was a girl who understood. She had a bit of an activist going on in her, and she was a girl who understood that I can use my stardom to give the right message out, to stand up to what’s wrong. That’s how Zara should be remembered.”