Obsession or racism !!

I saw bunch of girls waiting outside the beauty parlor for their turn. I tried to see the glimpse what’s going inside. Shades of velvety pink blush roll over a girl’s cheeks. The other one was getting a facial massage. After coming out, she holds up a mirror and inspects the results. Behind the kiosk, a clothing and lingerie store displays trendy fashions on mannequins with blond hair, blue eyes and milky white complexions. I wondered why there is a race among girls to look fairer. I pondered over this a little.

Even the advertisements and store posters that use Indian faces promote a look that is unattainable for most Indians, Long, silky straight hair; a tall, thin body; and, most importantly, a fair complexion. "Being white is the preference?"

                                 I grew up listening to my Grandmother tell me “when you grow up, “Tere liya Gori Paree Jaisi dulhan Layenge” or in other words when you grow up we will get a Fair beautiful bride for you”. As far back as I can remember, a woman's complexion has been a very big deal in my native land. When I was a child, my aunt forbade me to play outside lest I turn several shades darker in the sun. The same aunt lamented after my trip to Melbourne that the strong sun had made me "black." Many Indians feel their country's disturbing obsession with fairness has been compounded in recent years with the invasion of European and American retail outlets and widespread access to information via the Internet.  

Matrimonial ads in India -- arranged marriages are still the way many young people choose to wed -- often read like this: "Seeking match for beautiful, tall, fair girl ...

And those women who are the norm in India--that is, not light-skinned -- are targeted by a $400 million skin-whitening-cream industry. It began years ago with a product called Fair & Lovely.

Some people blame the industry for making the problem worse. It doesn't matter that skin creams don't really make you two shades lighter in a matter of a week. Women keep buying the stuff, believing there might be a chance. Pria Warrick, a former Miss India who now runs a finishing school for women in Delhi, says India is still struggling to get over its colonial past. "We, of course, in India are very obsessed with being very fair. I think it's something the British left us with," Warrick says. She also blames the infiltration of U.S. culture for making Indian society so focused on physical beauty. "American culture places a lot of importance on looks," she says. Indians stand at a crossroads, Warrick says. "How much do we pick up from the West?"

Some Indians are trying to reverse the movement to be fair. Actor Nandita Das has lent her face to the "Dark is Beautiful" campaign, trying to foment change. "The point is do we want to capitalize this prejudice and lack of self worth and further perpetuate it," Das says in the campaign, "or do we want to address it in a way and empower more women and make them feel good in the way they are?"

As I grew up I realized the futility and malarkey of fair skin and rejected it outright yet overwhelming number of Indians have yet to change their attitudes, whether it’s the ludicrous TV commercial that portrays a dark girl winning a singing competition to the absurd commercial of a girl winning a cycling competition and yes it’s no longer restricted to females. One of our leading Bollywood star endorses a men’s fairness cream which preaches that being fair can get you not only girls but also jobs.

But what came as a huge jolt to me and many like minded people was the launch of fairness cream for other body parts. I wondered is this for real? Can some people take their obsession for fair skin to this level?

There is a clear kind of discrimination being carried out across over society and we do not have to go far one just needs to open Matrimonial column of any news paper to read “Wanted tall fair beautiful girl for our son” and more importantly how many of us would indulge sanctimonious rhetoric and actually practice what we preach?

With all the development and progress that we are so proud of in 2013 sadly we have not yet managed to remove the shackles of medieval mindset. Building bridges and Rockets is achievement but real achievement and progress would only be achieved when we get rid of such racist mindset within our society unfortunately we still have to go a long way to achieve that.

It was that many Indian people (mostly women) are so obsessed with fair skin they'll go to the ends of the Earth to lighten theirs. They believe dark skin is ugly and light skin guarantees more opportunities in life. For example, "in newspaper advertisements through which brides and bridegrooms are sought, fair skin is ranked as a more desirable attribute than a university degree"

Quick background on skin color issues in India: Indian people from North India generally have lighter skin than those from South India because of different climates. The point is that the average Indian person is not as light-skinned as models, celebrities and Bollywood actresses. Many sources claim that the fascination with lighter skin stems from India's caste system. People from the higher classes were lighter and those from the lower classes were darker because they did a lot of manual labor under the sun. So lighter skin was associated with wealth and power. The same mindset carried on after India had been colonized by Britain. Again, the ruling class was light-skinned. Many say the situation in India is much the same today, even with the British gone and the caste system officially abolished.

My opinion about using skin-lightening products is mixed. On one hand, I believe everyone is free to do whatever they want as long as they're not hurting anyone else. I therefore neither support fairness creams nor do i criticize them. If they produce good results that make people happy, that's amazing. However, it's sad the opinion that only fair skin is beautiful is so deeply ingrained into the culture. This means skin lightening is often not what Indian people do for themselves. They're pressured into it by society.

Foreign cosmetic brands' fairness creams have only a small market share in India. The most popular is a domestic brand called Fair and Lovely, notorious for this advertisement:

The advert was known as "the air hostess ad".
It showed a young, dark-skinned girl's father lamenting he had no son to provide for him, as his daughter's salary was not high enough - the suggestion being that she could neither get a better job or get married because of her dark skin.

The girl then uses the cream, becomes fairer, and gets a better-paid job as an air hostess - and makes her father happy.
What the hell!

Way to convince people skin color is only relevant when it comes to judging beauty !

It bothers me to see magazines suggesting people have to change something about their physical appearance or personality. Do people think they should lose weight before stumbling upon dieting tips in a magazine or after?

                        There's a whole lot of money in first showing you dream skin, dream weight, dream closet, dream spouse, dream lifestyle and then advertising whatever is supposed to help you achieve these things (but it really won't).

In the ancient scriptures, epics, or folk tales, the good character is always pictured as being fair in complexion, suggesting that the fair are fair dealing and the dark complexioned has evil intentions. Add to that a history peppered with colonization by lighter-skinned invaders from the west, inequalities introduced by the caste system and 200 years of British rule, and it becomes quite clear why exactly the concept of fairness being superior is embedded deep within the Indian psyche.

During the British Raj, the idea that those with pale skin were superior came with the packaging. It was never spoken about and there were no propaganda campaigns – it was just understood. The very fact that you were being ruled by fair skinned people meant that they were superior to the natives – you looked up to the white man. Historically in the Indian subcontinent, fair skin was equated with the richer classes and indicated a high social standing. Dark skin has always been a sign of being a laborer, as the skin darkened due to long exposure to the sun or while farming or road sweeping. The obsession with fairness has been also linked to the caste system and not completely a result or byproduct of colonial rule. Thus, fair skin is associated with purity, high class and aristocracy, whereas fair color has been reduced to a ladder to success and happiness, such that even Men no longer want to be ‘tall, dark and handsome!’
                                      With Fair and Handsome creams in the market they want to be fair too. The skin lightening industry generates high profits and revenues from Indian subcontinent; this makes it quite obvious that India’s obsession with fair complexion is still persistent. Fairness in India is considered to be clean and beautiful, and the obsession for fair skin can be seen in various walks of life be it a child born in India-the first question asked by the relative is whether the child is fair? Rather than asking about his/her health. Apart from this the demand for fair complexion is high in marriage market, a typical matrimonial advertisement in India would read “looking for fair, slim and tall professional for fair, slim and homely girl (age: 24)”. In addition to this the advertisement of fairness products connects fairness with achieving other personal goals, such as marriage, success, empowerment, job opportunities, and confidence. Women being aware of the culturally determined advantage of being fair and have they made effort to look fair.

                                        Harley Street dermatologist Dr Aamer Khan has seen a rise in women suffering from serious skin conditions as a result of trying to bleach their skin in an attempt to look fairer said,“I see patients with hypo-pigmentation (loss of pigment) resulting in white patches and hyper-pigmentation leading to darker areas – both are caused by skin bleaching agents. People buy these creams that offer false hopes, but the fact is, there is no safe way to whiten your skin. There needs to be more stringent moderating of these products, as it is a very serious problem.”

On the other hand Anil Chopra, CEO of Indian beauty and fashion giant Lakme Lever said, “Skin tone is becoming far less relevant. Just look at India fashion week – more than half the girls are on the duskier side. I sit in on the judging panel ever year and not once have I heard a comment about skin color”.
 While India's first supermodel, Lakshmi Menon Bangalore-born beauty quit India three years ago at the age of 24. "Back home very few people wanted to hire me. It became clear to me that my skin colour was not in demand," recalls Menon who has the deep brown shade of a typical Bangalorean. The misconception that darker skinned Indians are somehow inferior and less desirable than their fairer counterparts has existed for centuries, and there are no major changes in the mentality of Indians with regard to giving preferring fair skin. India's obsession with fair skin is well documented: in 1978, Unilever launched Fair & Lovely cream, which has  subsequently spawned numerous whitening face cleansers, shower gels and even vaginal washes that claim to lighten the surrounding skin. In 2010, India's whitening-cream market was worth $432m, according to a report by market researchers ACNielsen, 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.

                            Cricket players and Bollywood stars regularly endorse these products. But now the film star Nandita Das has taken a stance against the craze and given her support to the Dark is Beautiful campaign which challenges the belief that success and beauty are determined by skin color. "I want people to be comfortable in their own skin and realize that there is more to life than skin color," she says, adding that an Indian paper had written "about my support for the campaign and then lightened the photo of me that went alongside it".

While she agrees that there is a long history behind the obsession with skin color, owing to caste and culture, she thinks the current causes should be targeted first. "Indians are very racist. It's deeply ingrained. But there is so much pressure by peer groups, magazines, billboards and TV adverts that perpetuate this idea that fair is the ideal," she says.

Das has often faced directors and makeup artists trying to lighten her when she plays the role of an educated, upper-class woman. "They always say to me: 'Don't worry, we will lighten you, we're really good at it,' as a reassurance. It's perpetuating a stereotype that only fair-skinned women can be educated and successful."

In 2005, the cosmetics company Emami launched Fair & Handsome for men, with an ad featuring the Bollywood star Shah Rukh Khan tossing a tube of whitening cream to a hopeful young fan, which the Dark is Beautiful campaign is seeking to have withdrawn. "Shah Rukh Khan is saying that to be successful you have to be fair," says Das. "Don't these people have any kind of conscience? You can't be naive; you know what kind of impact you have and yet you send out the message that says: 'Forget about working hard, it's about skin color.'"

                                                       In India, a country where the majority of the population is dark-skinned, there is a widely held belief that dark complexions are inferior to fair ones. This prejudice manifests itself in everything from hiring practices that favor light-skinned employees to matrimonial ads that list fairness as a non-negotiable characteristic of the future bride or groom. In the media, light-skinned actors and models are in high demand, while dark-skinned performers are rarely seen on screen. The message is clear: fair skin represents beauty and success, and as a result Indians are keen consumers of products that promise to lighten skin.

While racism runs deep in India's history, its roots intertwined with caste and colonialism, in today's India, it finds expression in consumer behavior and corporate advertising.

This uncomfortable fact has spawned dueling ad campaigns on the skin-bleaching front. In March of this year, an organization called Women of Worth launched a "Dark is Beautiful" campaign to draw attention to the effects of racial prejudice in India. The print ad features the actress Nandita Das urging women to throw out their fairness creams and abandon the belief that dark skin is ugly. Meanwhile, in early July, the cosmetics company Emami released a competing television ad starring Bollywood superstar Shah Rukh Khan. In the ad, Khan tosses a tube of fairness cream to a young fan, telling him that fairness is the secret to success in life. In response, the "Dark is Beautiful" campaign filed a petition on Change.org asking Emami to suspend the ad on the grounds that it is discriminatory

Online sources:

http://www.cnn.com/2013/09/25/world/asia/indian-ideal-of-beauty/
http://indiaopines.com/india-fair-complexion/
http://listdose.com/top-10-most-racist-countries-in-the-world-2/
 http://www.ndtvmi.com/b6/dopesheets/harpreet.pdf
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discrimination_based_on_skin_color
http://www.dressful.com/4413/vogue-india-racism-only-light-skin-is-beautiful
http://www.pinkvilla.com/beauty/skin-care/my-experience-racism-india-and-usa
http://newsfeed.time.com/2013/09/19/miss-america-is-too-dark-to-be-miss-india/
http://www.theguardian.com/world/shortcuts/2013/aug/14/indias-dark-obsession-fair-skin
http://fashion.telegraph.co.uk/article/TMG8409583/Indias-models-accuse-fashion-industry-of-racism.html
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2325502/Map-shows-worlds-racist-countries-answers-surprise-you.html
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http://listdose.com/top-10-most-racist-countries-in-the-world-2/