I’ve always found it fascinating that when it comes to beauty, we as people want what we can’t have. A ubiquitous example would be America’s obsession with tanning–as demonstrated by the overwhelming demand for tanning products, and by the millions who burn themselves (not to mention, risk skin cancer) in the sun–all in the hope of making their pale skin just a little bit darker. Meanwhile, in India, a country where everyone’s tan, fairness is the obsession, and the obsession is to the point where it only furthers the insecurities of millions of Indians and degrades them for the complexion they are born with.
Unfortunately, this prejudice is one that has been entrenched in Indian culture for thousands of years. In many of India’s religions, including Hinduism, darkness represents the evil in this world whereas brightness represents purity and innocence. Thus, gods are represented as having light blue skin, for dark skin is allocated to demons. Also, this divide between dark and fair has roots in socioeconomic status- for laborers would have to toil in the sun day in and day out whereas royalty didn’t have that situation. Thus, along with ethnicity and caste, fairness became yet another mechanism to divide the Indian population–as if India wasn’t racist enough.
This obsession was only propagated during India’s time as a British colony. The British, just as many European nations did, would judge the Indian population based on their physical features. The more “European” an Indian looked (fair skin, small nose, etc.), the more beautiful, and this Anglo-Saxon standard of beauty still dominates to this day.
Despite the nation modernizing at a massive rate, this bias still remains prevalent. In 1978, the multinational cosmetics company Unilever launched Fair and Lovely, a line a face cleansers, shower gels, and even vaginal creams that all deceived millions of Indians (in particular, women) into thinking that it would make their skin just the slightest bit fairer. And today, the fairness product industry, with Fair and Lovely being the primary leader, is the most profitable industry in India. As an article by The Guardian states, “in 2010, India’s whitening-cream market was worth $432m…and was growing at 18% per year. Last year, Indians reportedly consumed 233 tonnes of skin-whitening products, spending more money on them than on Coca-Cola”.
But who can blame the Indian population for buying into this industry so easily? Indian girls are bombarded with advertising that enforces that the only way to be successful in your life is to be fair. I can also testify to this ridiculousness, for every time I see a Fair and Lovely ad on TV, it always has to do with a dark-skinned girl who is shy, for she is ashamed of her complexion, and some fair celebrity comes to her rescue and gives the girl fairness cream that will solve all her life problems. All of the sudden, the once dark skinned girl who went nowhere in life is successful in all her endeavors and is happy, all because her skin is now fair. These ads not only degrade millions for who they are, but tells them that one can only be happy in life if they are fair, thus getting an entire population to obsess over products that do more harm to one’s skin than anything else.
Bollywood is just as much a culprit as the fairness product industry in reinforcing this prejudice. The industry has always been bias towards Northern Indian men and women, for they tend to have lighter skin than those of the south, and now, because Indians apparently aren’t fair enough, the industry has started the practice of hiring actresses from foreign countries such as Brazil, Great Britain, and the United States. Never mind the fact that they aren’t Indian. Never mind the fact that they don’t know a single word in Hindi. As long as their skin color meets Bollywood’s absurd standard of beauty, they’re golden.
Therefore, for the millions of us Indians who have endured hundreds of comments from relatives on how dark our skin has become over the years, dozens of home remedies in desperation to rid of our tan, and a bucket load of insecurity about who we are and how we look, I just want to say that dark IS beautiful. We have the power to change this perception that we all know is just ridiculous, and therefore, instead of shying away like ads tells us, it’s time to be proud and show our dark skin off to everyone.
The post Dark is Beautiful appeared first on Culture Shock.
