As divine as dark chocolate

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.