This past Memorial Day, I opened the medicine cabinet at my aunt’s house looking for toothpaste only to find a tube of Fair & Lovely staring back at me. My heart sank. I yelled for my 10-year old cousin. “What is THIS?” I asked her, holding the tube gingerly.
“What?” she said innocently, “It’s just suntan lotion so I don’t get dark.” I looked at the ingredient list. Indeed, among the ingredients was “sunscreen.” I shouldn’t have been surprised. This was the same girl who had teased her seven-year old darker-skinned cousin so much that a year later, the poor kid still adamantly states “I’m not pretty.” Little wonder given that our mothers come from a country where bridal makeup still means you pancake the woman in white foundation from the neck-up and then hide her hands under her dupatta so the color disparity doesn’t show. Strangely enough, I never realized the extent of the South Asian obsession with light skin until I was in college. Growing up with mostly Pennsylvania Dutch peers who were openly envious of my “natural tan,” the context in which skin color figured in my upbringing was limited to the African American literature I read in school. Novels like Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye, about a young girl’s desire to be white and Fannie Hurst’s The Imitation of Life, about a young black girl who decided to “pass” as a white girl certainly impressed upon me the importance of skin color in America. I just naively never considered its impact on South Asian culture.
My mother’s preoccupation with skin shades wasn’t revealed until the time my little sister and I went off to camp for the first time, when I was in college. In addition to sunscreen, she bought us both floppy, wide-brimmed hats “to protect your complexion.” When I made a joking reference to tanning, she went ballistic. “Tanning is for goras [white people], not for people like us. We already have enough color.” The topic came up again, after college, when I dated a guy from India. “Make sure you don’t get any color this summer,” she warned me. “Your in-laws won’t like it.”
I thought she was crazy until the guy told me the same thing. “At least wait until after my parents see you,” he groaned, when I told him of of a pool party. “I don’t want them to think you’re darker than you really are.” I was speechless.
Incidents like that are why I’m so happy that Women of Worth, an organization based in Chennai, is promoting a “Dark is Beautiful” campaign. (Thanks to Gem, a mutineer from Colorado who passed on the tip to Nilanjana.) The organization purports to erase the notion that “the beauty and value of an Indian woman is determined by the fairness of her skin.” Check out their video:
Thank goodness someone is trying to counter the obsession with all things fair. Especially since Hindustan Unilever Limited’s Fair & Lovely continues to market itself as a female-friendly brand via promotions such as their “Fair & Lovely Foundation: 2009 Scholarships for Empowering women” contest, as noted by SM’s Vasugi on Twitter. Yes, because fair skin tones are exactly what I need to feel empowered. Keep in mind, this is the same company that released ads like this:
Well blogged, that.
Great post! I am what you would call ‘wheatish’ but was extremely fair when I was a child. I happen to like my tanner adult complexion, but my mother and grandmother harp on it all day. It’s irritating!
I’ve said it before, but I still think the skin color preference is a reflection of class rather than racism. Workmen tend to bake outside in the sun a lot so dark skin becomes associated with manual labor. The US also had a preference for light skin up until the 60s or so when most people started working indoors. After that getting a tan became a sign of luxury (you have time to just laze around in the sun.)
It’s not just an Indian thing either. I have also known more than a few Korean and Japanese girls who were pretty finicky about skin-tone. The ideal, supposedly, is to strive for ghostly translucence over there. I find that only slightly less off-putting than the prevalence of blepharoplasty.
All that said, I pray to all the Gods that the day never comes when we invent skin lightening plastic surgery. As if people didn’t spend enough time as it is on inane superficialities.
The irony is that 2 of our most popular dieties are dark-skinned, and that darkness of complexion is (and has been) unabashedly celebrated in countless bhajans and prayers. So where and when did our phobia about a tannned complexion begin?
Like most things wrong with contemporary Indian culture, I like to blame the British.
Mostly because exploiting liberal guilt makes me smile.
Wow, what a great organization! Thank you for writing about this!! I am always thinking that there needs to be a movement to counter the crap that only light skin is considered beautiful. I have had a limited experience of colorism within the Indian and/or South Asian context. My mom and my family in India, have always complimented me and told me “black is beautiful” since I was kid and I always took it for granted that Indians were light and dark-skinned as the variety is seen by me amongst family and friends in Kerala. At the same time, I would here, “now mola don’t stay out in the sun too long, you don’t want to be too dark”. Or hearing my beloved uncle, who happens to be light-skinned, when deciding on a wife, mention for particular girls, “well she is kindof dark for me”. It’s a mixed batch and since I also grew up in the US and on the beach, and forever heard my American friends tell me they loved my color, I feel I was never really marked negatively by the colorism – I guess with the negative came tons of positive comments. And whoever studied the best came way higher up in what made you attractive.
At the same time, from my viewpoint in Kerala society, and Indian society as a whole, I have always seen dark and light-skinned people succeed and be in positions of power – looking at our politicians to my father’s successful friends. So that was another thing that helped me not be marked negatively by the colorism you would get.
Anyways these fair and lovely commercials are shameful!! It’s truly disgusting and stars should be ashamed of themselves who peddle this crap — and I’ve always wondered does this garbage work..
It’s nice now, with the internet, to see the beautiful Indian models, many, many of whom are dark-skinned get appreciated in India. I hope things will change. In the meantime there’s Lakshmi Menon and others, whose looks I can admire alongside the Aishwarya Rai beauties.
i would’ve went with the teeth whitener ruse.
It’s not just an Indian thing either. I have also known more than a few Korean and Japanese girls who were pretty finicky about skin-tone. The ideal, supposedly, is to strive for ghostly translucence over there. I find that only slightly less off-putting than the prevalence of blepharoplasty.
Of course not – I don’t think these skin lightening creams are more prevalent in South Asia…A friend of mine, Vietnamese American, who was traveling in Taiwan told me she could not find any moisterizers that did not have the bleaching element and so she had to use what she could buy. I do think many Indians are less ashamed to discuss the problem though.
YogaFire: the skin color preference is a reflection of class rather than racism
A distinction without a difference. “Race” is a less clearcut concept in South Asia that the USA (where it isn’t always as clear as people think it is). But bigotry based on skin colour, when due to race, class, ethnic origin, or whatever, is pervasive and pernicious in South Asia.
So lay off the colour-bigotry apologia. Philly Grrl is on the right track.
Agree with Yogafire @3 to most extent: I read that Chinese people had the same perception about dark skin, relating them to manual labor under the sun. But nowadays in China, the dark skin is coming to be prided by some as they show that the person has time and money to vacation in a sunny island. Here‘s a blog post from Chinese American perspective. Here‘s an article about more communities.
Having said that, I do think it is crazy that there is such strong prejudice in South Asian community, and the most sickening is that some people have sort of superiority complex just for their skin color (mostly because they don’t have any other thing to feel good about themselves).
Why this bigotry against fair people? If we are touched, do we not bruise? If we go out, do we not burn?
Ah clearly it’s apologia. It couldn’t be that one needs to actually understand the nature of a problem in order to avoid barking up the wrong trees while looking for solutions. I wasn’t even disagreeing with Philly Grrl so I don’t see where you think you’re coming from.
Whether the preference for fair skin is an issue of irrationally valuing fairness or whether it’s a reflection on class and labor makes a difference in the hows and whys of skin color preferences and, more importantly, actually gives you some idea of potential solutions that would actually work rather than barking up the wrong trees.
In this case, I don’t think simply saying “Dark is nice too” is going to work as well as encouraging respect and admiration for people who spend hard days toiling under the sun.
is there any evidence these “dark is beautiful” campaigns actually work? they strike me as too obvious in a special olympics sort of way. i suspect kids know when they’re being patronized. on top of that it s vaguely hypocritical, as if they’re creating a new colorism in order to fight the old, hoping this overcompensation will result in an equilibrium. the ends justify the means.
but i don’t think awareness is the answer here. whats needed is a lack or awareness, indeed deceptiveness. put hot dark chicks on the cover of vogue india but don’t say anything about it. this way the dark is beautiful propaganda gets passed on subconsciously and in a decade or 2 Indians will be kicking the israelis off the beach cuz there’s not enough room. just look how quickly the “skinny is beautiful” social construction became the ruling regime in the west. they didn’t say that’s waht they were doing, they just did it. and everyone except black people and j.lo just mindlessly went along for the ride. no questions asked.
Machiavellian Manju to the rescue again
2 words. Strom Thurmond.
We can talk all day about what should be considered attractive…but we can all agree that Megan Fox is hot so is Naomi Campbell and Padma L.
Diet and exercise folks. And cut out the white rice. Everything else is just whining.
put hot dark chicks on the cover of vogue india
already done –
http://jezebel.com/5021990/dear-anna-im-outsourcing-your-job-to-vogue-india-8-pictures-that-explain-why
Again. The bigotry against fairness. Why should brown be preferred over white?
YogaFire: My mistake. I’m sorry. Colour-prejudice in South Asia is soemtimes downplayed by commentors, and I incorrectly though you were going in that direction.
As I have said before skin color is a major marker of hierarchy in India. People in high places are DISPROPORTIONALLY lighter skinned. Even in my Industry, which is negatively correlated with fashion, the higher management, buttscratching circles are all noticeably lighter and more Caucasoid than the multitudes from colleges in the southern hinterland who do the actual work. Apartheid in Indian society is more insidious and deep rooted than the institutional varieties that have been expunged from Africa. What is needed is a charge from below to shake the tree by lots of Tribals with guns and red flags. Bulldoze the ivory towers, throw all the white looking Bollywood actors into jail and brown will be beautiful again.
” Why should brown be preferred over white?”
Hahahaha excellent..seriously though its the protein 🙂
Like most things wrong with contemporary Indian culture, I like to blame the British.
upper class muslims of turkic and persian provenance freely referred to south asians as blacks, and termed native converts to islam “black muslims” (as opposed to themselves, “white muslims”). the british also made the distinction between black muslims and white muslims when trying differentiate between the ruled and rulers. some of these issues crop up in the historical narrative around tippu sultan, a muslim warlord who was not a white (i.e., foreign provenance) muslim (from what i have read, and from the portraits) and so not viewed with the same respect by muslim elites than would normally have been the case.
as for class vs.race, in the american context that’s an irrelevant. different south asian groups mix together, and clearly there’s a hierarchy of aesthetics whereby northwest groups with lighter skin and “sharper” features are considered gifted with more in the looks dept. or at least that’s what i can gather from these message boards in the implicit (and sometimes explicit) hints left my commenters, especially by commenters who come from blacker snub nosed groups who suggest that they might be confused for punjabi or something to that effect.
there’s an easy way to avoid all this stuff. just marry into a white family. no matter how “fair” or “dark” you might be perceived by other brownz we all look the same color to them, brown.
Here’s an ad for Fairever made by a Chennai based company founded by Karunanidhi’s son’s son-in-law. Isn’t any better than the competition.
the character in the Lever ad seems to be an Iyer/Iyengar type, from the boonies – Mylapore/Mambalam or even Vellore and Cuddalore. These groups are marginalized several times over. Being members of a “Forward Community” they don’t have much of chance to enter the top professional schools – can’t score high enough. State government jobs too are beyond their reach. Central government jobs or foreign grooms are the only alternative, and there’s a long waiting line for them. Added to that being dull complexioned and meek doesn’t help matters. But bleach yourself and suddenly things change! What a yarn! The girl’s dad of course is using arcane knowledge from Ayurveda – supposedly a preserve of the Brahmins – that offers the only way they can “fight back”. And of course as Brahmins do offer some practices worth emulating – educating women, changing themsleves to get ahead – this is held up as an exemplar for everyone! Very complex. I would like to talk to scriptwriter.
you’re too kind. I’d like to drive a spike into that person’s skull.
p.s. hope you’ve dumped that oaf, Phillygrrl
Correlation does not imply causation. Maybe high position–>higher salary–>more $$ to spend on skin-lightening creams?
😉
Let me play the devil’s advocate… what’s intrinsically wrong with adults wanting to make themselves lighter-skinned because they believe it makes them more beautiful? I do think pursuing that ideal can go too far when it means that darker-skinned people get harrassed, discriminated against, etc. But so many pale white people believe that they’d be more beautiful if only they could tan. And the risks involved in laying out in the sun or in self-tanning are worse and have more proof to them than do the risks of using fairness creams. Another parallel is people who believe that they’ll be more attractive if they lose weight. It’s a little different because, for most people, losing weight also means being healthier, but let’s be honest, most people are not thinking about their health when they go on stupid crash diets, they’re just thinking about how they look. Not that I would endorse telling a 10 year old girl that she’s fat and needs to go on a diet, which is kind of the equivalent of what your aunt did, I suppose. But when it’s adults who want to take control of how they look, I’m a little iffier.
I get so annoyed by my relatives commenting on my color or when I have tanned, etc. But I also hate it when the people I’m with want to be out in the sun all the time (and it’s mostly white people who do this). Partly because I never show that much skin so I don’t like the discoloration that occurs between my face and neck and the rest of my body (I have used fairness creams in the past to try to get my face and neck to not be 10 shades darker than the rest of my body), but also because I don’t want premature aging or skin cancer. Perhaps that’s shallow, but I’m not much of an outdoors person anyway. So I’d rather not end up looking like I’m 35 when I’m 23, like the (again, mostly white) people I have known who are into serious ‘adventuring’ lifestyles.
It doesn’t surprise me that the ‘dark is beautiful’ campaign originates in Tamil Nadu. It’s probably the state with the some of the most notable social movements for the rights of the underprivileged, etc. Plus the fact that there are simply more dark-skinned people in TN, probably.
That commercial is ridiculously offensive, though. Ugh. I can’t even describe how repulsive it is.
BTW, do most Indian airlines (Kingfisher, Paramount, IndiGo, etc.) have a fairness requirement for their flight attendants? They must be in the top 1% of fairness of Indians.
I don’t think that’s true. I’ve been in large groups of Indians with white people, and traveled around India with white people, and they definitely noticed differences in skin color.
At first, I thought this “you’re so smart but a pity that you’re not fair” uneducated nonsense would die out when relatives and aunties saw me with my white-as-blue-ice husband. If he doesn’t care, why should you crapheads? Now, I notice that they gravitate to him and almost bask in his whiteness, as if it rubs off with asociation, while not giving me the same amount of attention. Ugh.
Also loathsome (and will earn you severe rebuke from me) is how some Indian-American Democrat women I know like to compare themselves to or look up to Jackie Onassis but not Michelle Obama. The skin pathology is more than just about looks, it’s also about race.
Going by past patterns, we can expect the following:
Accidental Freudian slips from people indicating that they’re pale-skinned.
Indignant groans from Pagal Aadmi for Debauchery in response.
Manju defending the Freudian-slippers and kvetching that he cannot find shoes for his unnaturally large feet.
All that snarkiness aside, this was a good blogpost.
“Now, I notice that they gravitate to him and almost bask in his whiteness, as if it rubs off with asociation, “
I see this a lot. It’s utterly grating.
tbh, which is why I am asking what a member of the family of Karunanidhi (supposedly a paragon of social justice) is doing, hawking a fairness cream. And as I have pointed out here on this very site, colour prejudice runs riot in Tamil Nadu, in popular speech, literature, the movies etc.,
Also loathsome (and will earn you severe rebuke from me) is how some Indian-American Democrat women I know like to compare themselves to or look up to Jackie Onassis but not Michelle Obama. The skin pathology is more than just about looks, it’s also about race.
To put into a sports term, Jackie O=Brett Favre and Mrs.Obama=Aaron Rodgers.
@32 “To put into a sports term, Jackie O=Brett Favre and Mrs.Obama=Aaron Rodgers.”
Do you know I’m a Green Bay Packers mega-fan (and thus would enjoy the hell out of this comment) or is it a complete coincidence?
If you rub, does he not chafe?
The advertisement was disgusting. But perhaps no more than botox or boob jobs (or any cosmetic procedure) which alter one’s natural anatomy and morphology to confirm to the acceptable standards of attractiveness. I have a friend who has consistently shown a preference for oriental looks. He dated a Bhutanese girl, then a Nepalese one, finally tying the knot with a girl from the Indian North East. Another friend finds white girls naturally more attractive, and has married a white American girl. I am partial towards dark skinned beauties. All the girls I have gone around with so far have been from South India. Should we all feel guilty of being racists? If not, why not the people who feel that lighter skin colour is more attractive? This group may contain a large number of people, but if this is what they feel, who are we to judge them?
I’m not too sure about this anymore. First of all, I think the emerging scientific consensus is this:
we don’t know how to lose weight. Some of the things Paul Campos is saying about obesity are controversial, but this isn’t. Every single study which has attempted to make overweight people get thin without very risky surgery has failed completely and utterly. Fewer than 1% of patients ever keep the weight off.
There was a time when fatter women were considered attractive. Are those of us who prefer lean women the equivalent of the fair skin preference people? are we not products of some socially constricted biogtry too? Is there not even a bigger industry out there selling diet and exercise snake oil? don’t fat people too experience a high degree of prejudice and discrimination?
if phillygirls bf told her to lose 5lbs would khoofi swoop in with such vengance?
In other words, are clinics of the ‘”curls and curves” variety as evil as the makers of faiir and lovely/handsome’?
There’s a difference between expressing a personal liking for a certain body characteristic, and indoctrinating your kids to have the same preference. AFAIK I know lots of parents who want their kids-in-law to be “fair” (at least by Indian standards), but I don’t know of an equivalent active institutionalized hankering for curly hair or straight hair or plump or skinny or whatever. (Body weight correlates to overall health, unlike skin color, unless skin is green or gray).
We do know how to lose weight. The formula is simple: Burn more calories than you consume. The formula for staying steady is likewise simple: Consume only as many calories as you burn.
What we don’t know how to do is properly control for all the exogenous variables that you would need to in order to statistically isolate the causes of weightloss.
Do you know I’m a Green Bay Packers mega-fan (and thus would enjoy the hell out of this comment) or is it a complete coincidence?
Yeah , I just checked your blog and saw that you were a packers fan. I myself am the president of the Drew Brees fan club.
Even though I am the darkest person on either side of my (extremely large) extended family, I have never once experienced discrimination or snide comments because of it. But that doesn’t mean that I don’t realize that such stupid ideas still exist. So I definitely think Women of Worth is absolutely FABULOUS! Get it for telling all those lovely ladies that their dark skin is beautiful!
thanks port, but why do you alway insist i enter thru the backdoor?
There’s no scietific evidence to support this thesis, especiallty if we add the criteria that the weight must stay off:
“In the 1990’s, the National Institutes of Health sponsored two large, rigorous studies asking whether weight gain in children could be prevented by doing everything that obesity fighters say should be done in schools — greatly expand physical education, make cafeteria meals more nutritious and less fattening, teach students about proper nutrition and the need to exercise, and involve the parents. One study, an eight-year, $20 million project sponsored by the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute, followed 1,704 third graders in 41 elementary schools in the Southwest, where students were mostly Native Americans, a group that is at high risk for obesity. The schools were randomly divided into two groups, one subject to intensive intervention, the other left alone. Researchers determined, beginning at grade five, if the children in the intervention schools were thinner than those in the schools that served as a control group.
They were not. The students could, however, recite chapter and verse on the importance of activity and proper nutrition. They also ate less fat, going from 34 percent to 27 percent fat in their total diet. Alas, said the study’s principal investigator, Benjamin Caballero, director of the Center for Human Nutrition at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, “it was not enough to change body weight.—
even if this is true, an outside of obesity this is devbatable, it doesn’t explain the preference for model-thin.
“Often, a visit to the doctor’s office starts with a weigh-in. But is a person’s weight really a reliable indicator of overall health?
Increasingly, medical research is showing that it isn’t. Despite concerns about an obesity epidemic, there is growing evidence that our obsession about weight as a primary measure of health may be misguided.
Last week a report in The Archives of Internal Medicine compared weight and cardiovascular risk factors among a representative sample of more than 5,400 adults. The data suggest that half of overweight people and one-third of obese people are “metabolically healthy.†That means that despite their excess pounds, many overweight and obese adults have healthy levels of “good†cholesterol, blood pressure, blood glucose and other risks for heart disease.
At the same time, about one out of four slim people — those who fall into the “healthy†weight range — actually have at least two cardiovascular risk factors typically associated with obesity, the study showed.”
fat camp
It’s funny. I was at a cafe this weekend with two of my friends when this young Indian couple walked in with their 2 or 3 year old daughter. All three of us couldn’t stop looking at them, then my friend remarked: “These Indians have such a beautiful tanned complexion” and we all agreed. They were dark olive and their kid was gorgeous.
For non-Indians (like myself), the tanned skinned is absolutely, absolutely, more attractive, than paler skin. Frankly, it makes you look more exotic, which is actually a good thing (no plain Jane types). That’s why so many people are going gaga over Padma Lakshmi and Sanjay Gupta. I even heard a right wing radio host going gaga over Zain Verjee.
And another thing: You will age much better with darker skin. No need for botox, plastic surgery and all of that other stuff. You won’t need it. The melanin is nature’s best skin protectant and as of today, no artificial replacement of it has been found so don’t get rid of your natural melanin!
I’ve told people before: blonds look good at 25, but after that, it’s pretty much downhill from there.
Nandita Das is what? 40? she looks 25.
Thanks for this post. I was lucky to grow up in a household where my mom encouraged my sister and me to get “nice tans” in the summertime. It was only later on in life, when I started mingling in the larger Indian community in our area, that I realized that people didn’t find me as attractive or beautiful because I was not fair. What an eye-opening experience that was … On another but related note, I’m expecting my first child in just a few days and I’ve been advised to drink milk with saffron, and kept wondering why.Though saffron is supposed to have health benefits, when I looked it up, I found this bulletin board with all these moms and to-be-moms talking about how they wished they could have made their infant daughters’ skin more fair and how saffron could help with that. I spent a very long time reading these thoughts, some from miserable women who don’t want their daughters teased etc.etc. and it made me tremendously sad. No matter what my daughter’s skin color is, I have hope that she can grow up in a world that finds her beautiful and doesn’t demean her confidence with comments that make her feel invalid … or that ever tries to make me feel like it was my fault she’s not as fair as she could have been because I didn’t drink enough saffron milk during my pregnancy …
Leave girls, even many guys want to become fair (SRK Fair)
One of my cousin (7 years), who has a very fair complexion & used to hang around with my dad (is dark). Another cousin jokingly told him “if you go near a dark person you will also become dark”. The poor kid believed it & was scared of going near my dad!!
A snippet of conversation with my friend BrownGuy: Dude, There is so much sunshine here. I thought i would become fair after coming here. (to US) Me: !!!
I haven’t heard about saffron with milk, but I’ve heard something along the lines of almonds in milk making your children very light. Among my malu cousins, I was always the dark one and no one was more upset about it than my mother. She accused her sister in law of hiding the secret of drinking almonds with milk so only her daughters would be fair.
I’ve grown up sensitive about my skin color, and now at “marriage season” I’m feeling the heat even more. I’ve been given like 20 different types of face masks that supposedly will make me lighter and my mom wouldn’t even consider a dark man as a potential son-in-law.
When will it ever end?