Ah, Padma.
Padma, Padma, Padma.
Potentially Mallu (I thought you were TamBrahm!) beauty, accomplished author and Television ish-tar, you speak so uniquely and that takes some talent. What sort of talent, I haven’t a clue, but I’ll credit you anyway, because I’m fond of you like that.
A few years ago, you made every Desi man’s heart beat a little bit faster, from the joy of the improbable occurring; if a supermodel would marry an award-winning, uber-protective, “distinguishedâ€-looking author, then everyone had hope (as long as they did something extraordinary. Or had a looooot of paisa). It was the ultimate Revenge fantasy and that’s exactly what it was, because the dream, it died. You and the man who defended your intellect, who insisted that you were being shortchanged by the focus on your outsides, you are…kaput.
So, what to do, except to follow the well-established mores of our culture. You don’t recall? I am happy to remind. Now comes the time when you cast your eyes downwards, marinate in the somber reality of failure and wait an appropriate time before you are back on the scene, the ultimate “Innocent Divorcee, no issueâ€. It is imperative that you be seen alone, that you not be photographed with strange men touching you, because if a potential groom from Madras or Bangalore sees that, chee, vat he vill think?
So it is paining me, Padma-akka (chechi?!) to see you emulate the controversial example of that Sarita Denzel Masala of Mississippi, especially since you chose to do that in the front row of the Marc Jacobs show, where everyone could see you! Aiyo! What’s the one thing your Amma told you, edi?
“Don’ bring home a Kala or Muslim.â€
Stop lying, you aren’t special, she totally said that. [Aside: whenever I hear that oft-repeated phrase, I wonder what would happen if one chose to bring home a KALA MUSLIM, but I digress]. I’m well aware that all of our parents ignorantly shouted this rather nonsensical order at us, in an attempt to be helpful (though I’m sure for our Muslim friends it was “Don bring home a Kala or a Hindu!â€, since the hate goes both vays).
So, what are you doing? Yes, this Russell, he is healthy, wealthy, wise. He does yoga. He is a vegan (unlike you! Naughty, naughty omnivore!) and he seems kind. BUT. He has two children! And his ex-wife will smear Vaseline on her face, take her bamboo earrings (at least two pair) off, hand them to her assistant and then CUT YOUR ASS UP. Have you not seen Life in the Fab Lane, starring Kimora Lee Simmons? Put down the bong and pay attention: you should be terrified!
Worst of all, when I was watching the Today show this morning, I saw your “friend” Russell. He was wearing his “uniform†of baseball cap, sweater, shirt, jeans, sneakers. Ek tiny problem: there was an OM symbol on his jeans pocket. Now I am both Christian and a quondam lover of status denim (Diesel, Blue Cult, James et al), so I am just slightly, less offended than half of those who are sure to comment AND I get that the kundi pockets must have some elaborate design on them, to show people you have rs.5500+ to burn on a pair of pants which was once worn by the working class…to WORK, but I was taken aback when I saw that, much as I was when I viewed this commercial. Someone who is so entranced with our culture should know better than to put a sacred image on a back pocket!
Om on pocket? Home with two kids, and a fiercely mean ex-? Far too friendly hand on your leg? What are you thinking? Who will want you, if you continue with such shenanigans? They will burn you in effigy, I tell you. Or worse. They will call for strikes. The sweatshops in Bangladesh will stop stitching Phat Farm and Baby Phat crap! There will be chaos!
I only say all of this to be nice. I am concerned for you! If you ask me, you should try to be more homely and make sure you fast on Fridays for a good husband; perhaps your kinda-boring cooking show can tape on other days? Vatewer. I care, so I advise. I am like this only. You should be, too. Hangari!
Photo via NYT. A big, juicy “thank you” to Rumor Monger, for the tip. 🙂
That is the twee-est thing I’ve heard all day. Tanks. 🙂
Gotcha…to be candid, when I saw this on the News Tab, I thought there was probably nothing going on, but I couldn’t resist the urge to tweak our parents’ noses about the whole “DON’T DATE A KALA/KARAMBAN”-bullshit. That’s my favorite part of SM– the commiserating.
That and my Dad actually used to shout something similar to…
“Do NOT be photographed with BOYS! People will think you have boyfriends!”
…at me. Which concomitantly annoyed and amused me. 🙂 Couldn’t pass up the opportunity to vent about that, either, since that was the second thing I thought about, after seeing this pic…
most of my female relatives parents would love for them to get boyfriends. they are all getting figity wondering when they are going to get married and make babies.
In India, both are true. (I’m sure Razib will be all over this in a minute.)
re: what proportion of light skin is from aryans and from endogenous selection/variation? well, i haven’t done the detailed maths on this, but
1) it looks like around 10% of the ancestry of south asians over the past 10,000 years is exogenous to south asian
2) so that serves as an uppper bound on the variation in skin color due to outsiders. the maximum effect would be if browns were black skinned and the outsiders totally white skinned.
but recent data implies that isn’t ancestry, but selection. looking at the distribution of light skin color one would assume a priori that the alleles (mutant variants) were introduced from the outside, but fundamentally it doesn’t matter. what seems to have happened is that within the last 6,000 years at least one light skin allele has been under rapid selection, and has increased to very high frequencies.
here is the data from the recent study which checked out unexposed skin in british south asians to assay what causes skin color variation for the number in the lightest 20% and darkest 20% of reflectance in the sample by region:
nationality/darkest 20%/lightest 20%
punjabis 75 247 bangladeshis 235 100 sri lanka 75 2
from this you can get a general sense of the modal skin color range in south asia. 50% of the lightest 20% carry a light skin causing mutant which has increased in frequency through western eurasian (and is extant at 100% in europe) within the last 6,000 years, while 10% of the darkest 20% do. this to me suggests that a lot of selection has gone on, but my inspection tells me that is this more than 10% penetration if you crank out the expected frequency in the population by skin color and do a weighted estimate using regional populations….
p.s. blue eyes in europeans also seem a feature of the last 10,000 years, same with light skin in east asia, ancestry is going to probably explain less in terms of gross physical features than you would expect
p.p.s. i have read that many of the north indian skin color terms date to the mughal period. the muslims, who were often 1st generation immigrants in mughal service, were eager to distinguish themselves from the kala native converts.
Who is a Karamban? I searched Google, but all I got was a Youtube video of a donkey horsing around some place.
A Karupan (or so I’m told). 🙂
Dammit! This shit is pan-Indian. My Dad has a mooh-boli sister whose son is in the merchant navy. When he left home for the high seas, his mom told him the very same thing- I will accept whoever you bring home; she shouldn’t be Kali or Muslim.
Given the unnatural attraction that Indians have for white/ fair skin, it’s not surprising that there are not many black-brown couples around.
Ahh I still remember… I still do.
Going back to India once, my aunt decided I had become too dark, she made sure to mention it to me, a few times, in case I missed it.
Although Karupu means black, karumban / karupan refers to dark skinned men. Depending the time of day and the position of the planets it could range from to color of the mocha to the color of those eye-talian leather shoes.
Citation please, this sounds made up.
Given the unnatural attraction that Indians have for white/ fair skin, it’s not surprising that there are not many black-brown couples around.
i think that the ideal indian skin is a light golden color, right? my mom tend to think olive skinned southern europeans have the best skin color, but northern europeans are too pale.
oh ok ouch.
“Commiserate” is right indeed.
[Off-topic mini-rant: What is UP with job applicants typing “compensation commiserate with my experience” on their CVs? “Commensurate”, people, “commensurate”!]
One place this could work to your advantage is at office buildings that have those magnetic cards for entry that you wave under a detector (as opposed to swipe through a reader). You can put your card in your back pocket, present your back pocket to the detector, and then declare “The power of [sacred image name] shall open all doors!”. If you don’t want to propagate your genes, you can use a picture of Darth Vader and claim that the nothing can stand in the way of the force.
Razib, thanks for chiming in.
If the light skin allele (whether introduced from the outside or arising through natural variation) is being selected for – then if the selection is culturally based it must still be explained somehow (I go with naturally rarer = preferred for that reason alone).
But if the selection is biological (e.g., inducing greater physiological or intellectual fitness = reproductive success) then it must correlate with other genes that are more clearly tied to physiological fitness. A lighter skin would not be the right adaptation to the higher insolation in the tropics, at least not in the conventional view of what melanin does for you.
even the NOI got in the act. elijah muhammed picked Malcolm X as his spokesman in part b/c of his skin colour
What kind of fucked up shit is this?
Oh wait. I forgot, Manju discussing Malcolm X is like Denise Richards discussing Pi-Meson theory.
Malcolm was chosen because of his selfless work, his ability to maintain muslim practices, and his powerful command of scripture (Bible, Koran,) and history.
The only place this kind of colorism is explicitly mentioned is the choosing of W.D. Fard by Allah, supposedly, because of his “brown” complexion, he’d be able to move among whites more freely.
I already do this on the DC metro, because I have a semi-permanent, plastic “Smartrip” card instead of one of the more disposable paper ones, which you need to actually insert and wait for in order to enter or exit the station; when the paper gets returned (after being read), the gates open. If you have the Smartrip card you just wave it over a designated spot and the same things happens, with far less effort/time wasted. If I keep it in my back pocket, a vaguely Shakira-like hip swivel gets the job done. 😉
However, when I do this later today, I shall announce, “the power of my kundi shall open doors!”, which I find extra amusing, because I think that’s one of Metro’s slogans…”Metro opens doors”…
But if the selection is biological (e.g., inducing greater physiological or intellectual fitness = reproductive success) then it must correlate with other genes that are more clearly tied to physiological fitness. A lighter skin would not be the right adaptation to the higher insolation in the tropics, at least not in the conventional view of what melanin does for you.
1) i think that light skin is relatively new in the last 10,000 years, and i suspect vitamin d deficiency is a major cause when switching to a high starch (remember, europeans have gotten much lighter in the last 10,000 years, as have east asians).
2) vitamin d deficiency exists in india.
Now, now boys…don’t make me pull this car over. Play nicely.
There you go! How do you decide an ideal skin colour, for an entire population?
You are on the dot with your observation about Northern & Southern Europeans. In my previous assignment in Central Europe, among my co-workers were Europeans of all nationalities. North Europeans, particularly Scandinavians are particularly pale, while those residing around the Mediterranean are darker. It’s got to do a lot with lifestyle as well. Outdoor enthusiasts tend to be darker than the rest because of exposure to the sun.
Maybe the DC Metro should rename it “MagneticallY Activated Smarttrip Sensor” (MYASS).
I hope the OM wasn’t emblazoned on the ass pocket of a pair of True Religions…because then I could have a crisis on my hands..:(
Is that like the Britney Spears guide to semiconductor physics? I tell you, all these celebrities are trying to one-up each other in the brain game.
How do you decide an ideal skin colour, for an entire population?
i’m not deciding dumbass! i’m querying what the ‘consensus’ is.
Now, now boys…don’t make me pull this car over. Play nicely.
But there’s only so much stupidity one human being can take…
because anyone who’s read the book would know that Malcolm’s mother married Earl Little in particular because he was dark, and wanted her kids to have some “color” (as her biological father was a white man who raped her mother) This man had red hair, giving Malcolm some traces of red color in his hair, and hence his early hustler name, “Detroit Red”
I can’t figure out WHAT brand he was wearing…I want to assume Phat Farm, but I didn’t find any when I googled. That disturbed me more. What if the designer who chose to use it had no clue what it stood for? Yeesh.
If anyone sees these jeans or has more info, please let me know (email is linked in my handle). I’m very curious about them.
I like that, personal attacks already. An ‘ideal’ skin colour for a population as diverse as the Indian one cannot exist.
You said- i think that the ideal indian skin is a light golden color, right
You have already decided for yourself. Where did you try to reach a consensus? And all I asked you is how you reached that conclusion, so that I could reach one myself.
It was ME who was trying to reach a consensus. BTW, am I feeding a troll?
It was ME who was trying to reach a consensus. BTW, am I feeding a troll?
That’s gotta be a first.
I like that, personal attacks already. An ‘ideal’ skin colour for a population as diverse as the Indian one cannot exist.
just because it is diverse on many metrics doesn’t mean it is diverse in regards to attitudes toward ‘fair and lovely.’ just because there are chocolate nuts like KXB doesn’t mean that they’re thick on the ground.
Huh? I wasn’t talking about any/ many metrics there. I was talking about only skin colour. It ranges from extremely fair (Kashmir & some parts of North India) to extremely dark (parts of Kerala/ TN), with people of all possible shades & hues accross India.
With such diversity in colour, it’s virtually impossible to call a single shade ideal. Of course, one can have prejudices towards one shade, but that scarcely makes it ideal.
With such diversity in colour, it’s virtually impossible to call a single shade ideal. Of course, one can have prejudices towards one shade, but that scarcely makes it ideal.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Is-ought_problem
btw, follow up on skin color & ancestry, there’s a good model for a gene which spread through selection to the point that can’t be explained by ancestry: the allele for lactase persistence in northern india. it is too prevalent to be explained by ancestral inputs.
It’s hard to find on the internets, but i came up with this teaser in JSTOR – The Scholarly Journal Archive(you have to pay to read the whole article):
… explained that Elijah Muhammad named the light-skinned Malcolm to his first important post in the Na- tion of Islam because of his “complexion’– …
Now, those of you whose knowledge of the NOI goes beyond HMF’s kindergarten level of understanding, may know that elijah, malcolm, and louis were all light skinned blacks (just a coincidence?). malcolm spoke in this autobio about the privileges he received because of his light skin (though not in the NOI). there’s much info out there about elijah using his skin as a badge of honor among blacks, and he was keenly aware that his followers would not follow someone who looks like clarence thomas, he needed a thurgood marshall. call it NOI realpolitick.
would padma & russell be the next rachel & damon? (sorry if this has already been mentioned)
padma will start her new line of clothing within three years if they get together. girl may not be med school material, but she can hustle with the best of them, trust.
manju, i remember it from the movie (the thing about muhammad appointing because of his light skin and charisma). and of course it was once important for black leaders to pass the ‘brown paper bag’ test. anyone who doubts some of manju’s assertions can read Our Kind of People: Inside America’s Black Upper Class which details the physical requirements once important to be a black leader.
what possible relevance does malcolm’s mother’s attitude have in regards to elijah muhammed’s racism?
This reminds me of the time when I had four of my nephews (all under the age of 8) to wrangle, each of whom hated another, which left me with two wrestling matches to stop. Geez, guys. 🙂 It’s Friday, stop being mean to each other. Damnit, you know I hate being poly-anna. This is out of my comfort zone, this niceness. I cannot resume our regularly scheduled, bitchy programming until you all behave! Three out of four of you are NOT trolls; you’re regular commenters I like…I can’t be mean!
hey look! more padma lakshmi!
she looks kind of like lisa ray in that first one, no?
HMF:
You’re a scholar and a gentleman.
HE DOES HAVE AN OM ON HIS BUTT!
OM MY GOD
No, Rachel and Damon are the next Rachel & Damon. They are the future of fashion/mogul combos. See the ‘Viva Brazil’ issue of Vanity Fair for the proof! Padma & Russell seem like an afterthought to me, though I do love ultra-boring voiced Padma dearly(who i’ve never heard of as Mallu till this post).
😀
it definitely brings a different meaning to the phrase ‘your body is a temple’
as the saying goes, om is where the arse is.
Om, sweet Om.
Russel Simmons is my OM Boy
I vaguely remember this guy Russell used to be on some city council. HE used to work as an Ombuttsman or something.
Judging from the photo in this post, Russell has some way to go with Padma before they reach Om base.
#173 noblekinsman
Sad but true, But what’s the flip side of this? Some people get angry when AFAms eye roll at Tiger Woods with his I’m a ‘Cablinasian,” and claim that any (black) person who objects to this is just playing the race card? Or is it “different” when someone is famous, and “other” groups then have amutual feeling of acceptance for the ‘mixed’ person? I’m fine with people claiming/being what ever makes them feel good, but when it gets to the point you have to TELL me what you are, when I haven’t asked, it’s a bit suspect.
John McWhorter-,who has made a career out of so called “black English” – wrote, Exactly this is happening under our noses among young brown folks.? For one I really wish he would visit the UK, make a couple of stops in Bradford,Glasgow, or Dublin and have a chat with the non black people. Secondly, dude is not “jet black” in skin tone himself, many AfAm, Africans etc. are not either. However what’s up with using Brown?, beside the fact that “you people”(smile) are using it? He uses “black” as well, but why the flipflop?… to me that signals that he would be “perturbed” (insulted) to be called black? Yes I know that in some backward circles amongst AfAm’s calling someone black is an insult… I think notbeingfunny addressed the fact it’s not only in our community that might be a problem.
HUEY #166 ” Hair straighteners? Because having straight hair is considered the “norm” I think his comments were spot on. No one gonna fire you for wearing “natural” hair. That is not the same thing as saying your going to be on the ‘fast track’ for the corner office either. Yes we all know it’s all about performance, what you can deliver blah blah – but you don’t get in the door with “militant/proud to be black” hair.
PS #190…maybe b/c in my personal experience I have experienced many AAs stare me down and try and touch my hair . Would you say the area you were in was “the hood” Maybe its ‘novelty of seeing someone with brown skin and long straight(non weaved) hair? Obviously it was jealousy. I wear my hair relaxed, but its never as easy for me, as for some people, to hit the gym, shower and be ready with “date hair” right after work. I KNOW desis use (electric) hair straighteners,but there have been times when I wished it could be simpler,but maybe you should hang out in better places 😉
As someone noted in an earlier comment- if you do not look as if you’ve been racially blended it can be a cold world.
Anna’s new slogan: There can be only one.
Who cares who she dates? U dedicated an entire post to this??? Seems like someone has too much time on their hands!!
She can date palm trees, but the post is not about Padma & Russell as much as it is about desis venting healthily about relationships.
Who cares who she dates? U dedicated an entire post to this??? Seems like someone has too much time on their hands!!
the fact that you used your marginal time to post the comment implies something about the time you have on your hands.
and who cares? look at the number of comments.