Fair Skin Obsession
India's obsession with fair skin
is well known and deep-rooted. Colour prejudice is widespread and practiced
openly across the country. Indian society believes skin colour determines a
person's worth. In our culture, all virtues are associated with "fair"
while anything dark has negative connotations. TV programmes, movies,
billboards, advertisements, they all reinforce the idea that "fair is
beautiful".
Colorism, the bias against people
of darker skin is partly a product of colonial prejudices, and it has been aggravated by caste, regional differences and nation’s film industry, which
has long promoted lighter-skinned artists. Preferences for light-toned skin
over dark when it comes to marriages and some jobs are still upending the
lives of hundreds of thousands of Indians.
From the beginning India's media
and advertisement industries are promoting the idea that women with dark
complexions should aspire to be fairer. Even after attempts to address
skin-based discrimination in the past by Advertising Standards Council of India, it has
failed to change much. Most dark-skinned women are still desperately trying to
look fair.
This past week, Unilever and
other major international consumer brands, facing accusations that they were
promoting racist attitudes, said they would remove labels such as “fair”
“white” and “light” from their products, including the skin-lightening creams
that are wildly popular in India. But America’s intense discussion of race, in
the wake of George Floyd’s death, seems to be having some impact here.
Our market is stocked with
various products that advocate for fairness and beauty. We have so many
cosmetics that promise a particular skin tone after application. In fact, if
the new age we have so many fashion bloggers and vloggers, social media
influencers, who advertise various creams, facemasks, gels, that pledge for
skin lightening. And marketing strategies are luring everyone into this
fallacy.
Most of us show apparent
ignorance about the practice of exclusion and discrimination based on the skin
tone of a person, although it is a deep-rooted problematic practice embraced by
both the oppressor and the victim. This system of colourism, with its
intersections with the caste system, creates structures that creates an unequal
footing for darker skinned individuals, specifically women, in India.
This colonial preference of light
skin is internalized by numerous women and men around the country with the help
of media campaigns and celebrity endorsements. They also have tangible and sometimes
even fatal consequences for darker skinned individuals who become the target of
discrimination and prejudice.
I have been thinking a lot about
how a person’s skin tone is really a great matter of concern for society. Honestly, we are so obsessed
with associating beauty with fairer skin, that we fail to realize that beauty
should never be associated with superficiality.
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