As divine as dark chocolate
A young girl
sits in her room, sad. She looks at the mirror and there it reflects her dusky
self. Enter the mother with a tube of fairness cream and the girl looks up and
smiles. BAM!! She is a fair and all her problems are gone. She wins awards, an
amazing job and the man of her dreams. Don’t worry! Apparently more than half
the world is familiar with such advertisements. Activists and groups can all
cry aloud, but the media and advertising or even your next door aunty will not
stop commenting if someone is dark.
The ASCI, “Advertising
Standards Council of India can bring in new guidelines for fairness products
and adverts. But the shadow of colourism looms large” Says Nandita Das, a dark
skinned beautiful actress. It’s very sad that the confidence level and
capability of a person is calculated based on the colour of one’s skin. As an
ambassador of “Dark is Beautiful” campaign, she says, people are discriminated
against because of their skin colour.
During my
research, I met Dr. Anand, a leading dermatologist in Adayar. He says, he has
about 3-4 walk in patients a day. These are anxious parents with young dark
skinned teenagers, who come in wanting me to lighten their skin. “I think it is
racist and constitutional.” He says, beauty parlours are keen to cater to this
demand and therefore provide steroid based creams which end up giving the user boils, pimples and rashes and even bleached
skin. What is alarming is today men are not conscious of their looks, they are
hyper conscious. They are ready to spend lakhs of rupees just to look fair. I
turn down these requests and tell them to go to a nearby hardware store and buy
some bleaching powder instead.
The word
Krishna means dark. We are ready to worship him, but don’t want our children to
be born dark. Shadii.com or Bharathmatrimony is over flowing with requests for
fair skinned brides. The Indian Medical Association is working towards banning
over the counter sales of steroid based creams as these creams have a side
effect. Yes, they do lighten the skin
pigment, but excess usage can lead to skin cancer. Today we have gone so far to
the extent, that we want our underarms to be white.
Every single
film, magazine, hoarding, advertisement show dark actresses paler and paler
until they become fair. Ranjinikath’s daughter was born dark, but today looks
photoshopped and fair. “We as Indians are very racist. It’s deeply ingrained.
There is so much pressure by peer groups, magazines that fair is ideal” says
Nandita Das. How many times have we heard jokes offensive to dark colour people
while we click photos to not merge with the shadows.
A majority
of our people will disagree that such discrimination even exists. It is only
those who have personally experienced it, will agree to the existence of criticism
and subtle remarks. We have adopted fair actresses to act in our movies. But it
is permissible for the actors to be any colour they wish. Even Barbie dolls,
after an outcry that they are all fair and white are now being produced to
represent skin pigments of all continents.
How can we fight this?
1) Talk to your
child’s teacher about raising this as an issue in class.
2) Provide
equal opportunity for children of all skin shades.
3) Empower your
family with equality.
4) Encourage
your child on the joy of having friends of all cultures and colours.
We have to
stand up against all forms of media messaging and cultural bias against dark
coloured girls. I hope that our children will grow up believing that all skin
colours are beautiful.
