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:
I suspect skin color is a sensitive issue for most of us because we’ve grown up in close contact with the west (or in it), and skin color is practically synonymous with race here. This isn’t the case in India though – skin tone preference derives mostly from what it signals about social status. Skin color is not correlated with an axis of identity (with some exceptions), so how is it bigotry? It’s essentially the same as preferring fat women because that signals affluence. Just another preference that reflects what the society views as desirable.
The advertising that’s actually bigotry is most matrimonial ads. The insistence that lower castes cannot marry into your family is much more troubling than wanting a fair daughter in law.
And yes, it’s still stupid and illogical and must be dealt with by the forces of good. But this approach is prolly ineffective, as pointed out by Manju.
institutionalized hairism
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.
yes, the type of white people who would travel around india. these are not typical white people (frankly, they are not typical people, period). back in the united states, sanjay kumar, ex-ceo of computer associates who immigrated to the USA from sri lanka, wore a “i am not an iranian” t-shirt in the late 1970s (there were some political issues that made iranians unpopular in the late 1970s 🙂 in many parts of europe the roma (“gypsy”), who are about 50% european and 50% south asian, and so run the gamut from totally white to totally brown in appearance (with most in the middle), are called “blacks.” despite the fact that most roma are much lighter skinned than the typical south asian, or even the typical punjabi. my point is that say you are a very dark-skinned girl who was raised in the type of south asian family made to feel bad about being comparatively dark skinned vis-a-vis your fairer relatives. if you marry a white man you remain visibly dark-skinned, but the more salient reality is that you’re brown, period. your “lighter”-skinned cousins are invariably going to be the dark swarthy ones if they marry into a white family as well.
Isnt it interesting that most of the famous Indians or INdian Americans in the west are dark skinned compared to the celebs in India?
Just because there isn’t any statistical evidence doesn’t mean there isn’t any scientific evidence. The evidence is simply an application of the second law of thermodynamics. If they’re not losing the weight it’s because they’re not in any caloric deficit. There are numerous sources of calories and numerous ways that people burn or avoid burning them. Not getting enough sleep can slow your metabolism. Getting too much sleep will slow your metabolism. It goes on and on and the majority of the calories you burn are impossible to measure accurately enough to do a proper test. The margins of error are massive and the problems of colinearity–where one factor will influence other factors in ways your model does not account for–are huge and understated.
I can’t even think of how to arrange an experiment to properly evaluate the biology behind weight-loss to my satisfaction unless I was able to actually put people in cages with strictly controlled diets and activity schedules. We can evaluate the efficacy of specific policies, such as school lunch programs, in making kids healthy, but even that runs into some problems with messaging they receive through the TV and other sources.
Phillygrrl, I love you forever for writing this.
I hate the dark skin prejudice among South Asian. My great-grandmother back in India repeatedly tells me in Telugu that I’ll never get married because I’m dark, and she keeps at it even when I tell her I love my dark skin, and that I don’t want a stupid Indian boy if he is racist about dark skin.
I wonder if if Phyllygrl and other ABDs who are talking about ‘colorism’ in the USA realize that ‘colorism’ in India is quite a different beast. Quite like American Christianity is quite different to Desi Christianity. Strongly protest the ‘colorism’ in the Western world amongst South Asians. I totally agree with that approach. Most ABDs dont understand how ‘colorism’ works in India today. Best leave it alone. A little knowlege only serves to display ones ignorance. Color makes a differences in the ‘dating / marriage’ market. But not insurmountable. For those who talk about Sanjay Gupta as a dark desi – please he is practically white. n
I am a dark skinned desi. I know the pain both personally and professionally and have felt it keenly.
See the difference below – I just swapped words around 1) “Thin” blonde woman is more “beautiful” than a “fat” blonde woman
2) “Fat” light skinned is more beautiful than a “thin” dark desi.
really no difference at all between desi fondness for light skin and the western fondness for skinny women.
crux of the matter. Nor will Phllygrl take offence at that statement. I am willing to bet “NO”. AUD10. Any takers ?
The way I see it the world likes to be in between. Not many people like to be pale white other than Nicole Kidman and her fans. Its not great to be too fat or even too thin – oh the amount of comments indian aunties pass on you if you are in that category. Therefore there’s always market in this world for diet pills and lightening creams. As I write this I have spread bleach on my face – to cover the unwanted hairs.. nobody wants to date a woman with equal facial hair as them! Come on now who’s going to condemn me for that?
Whenever I see a dark Punjabi kid with no need for Word spellchecker, I think it must of been the handiwork of Mahalingam Karuppuswamy the Randy Peripatetic Doodhwallah
I live in India and spend a lot of time on outdoor activities/sports. I notice a significant change in people’s behaviour when I come back darker from an outdoor break. Somehow I get less respect when I am darker – from taxi drivers, security guards and other service providers, but also from people I do business with. Not that anyone is rude, but I distinctly feel my social status goes down a notch – the service providers no longer display their usual obsequiousness (a good thing, but for the wrong reason), and in business settings I have to assert myself more to be heard and taken seriously.
In India, fair skin is a lot more than just a benchmark of aesthetic beauty (though it is that too, even for men). It is a class- (and very likely a caste-) marker.
Yet by international standards these top 1% of indians are still pretty dark.
OK, how about a little “let he who is without sin…”
(The girls in particular) Have you ever expressed a preference for tall men? And by extension turned down a shorter man? How about judging a person by his clothes, facial hair, Body Odor?
I don’t see why people get their panties all up in a bunch when people are judged based on skin color, while other superficial traits – like height, weight, clothing – are routinely used to judge people, and are considered completely acceptable.
I think the outrage is multiplied by the fact that there exists a “cure” for dark skin. “How dare you try to fix something that we’re desperately trying to classify as a non-problem?” Well, don’t use it if you are against skin color being used to judge people. Good for you. For the rest of the people, can we just let them ask for and receive what they want?
I find Bluebulb’s (64) comments refreshing and honest.
Society has some norms and standards that we have to contend with them. Preference for fair skin color is one of them. This is just a fact that we have to live with. No amount of campaigns, awareness, advertisements is going to change that one bit; I am sorry.
What is wrong however is ridiculing and making fun of people in the public on that account. That is certainly bad manners and should not be tolerated.
In passing I should mentione, in many traditional south Indian arranged marriages it is common place that the groom chosen could be darken skinned. The reverse scenario is also quite common. A common refrain would be from the elders .. we would not get such an agreeable horoscope, etc. So do not let colour be the deciding factor. i would think this is less common in love marriages where emotions play a larger role.
Manu wrote: There’s a difference between expressing a personal liking for a certain body characteristic, and indoctrinating your kids to have the same preference.
Bluebulb wrote: don’t see why people get their panties all up in a bunch when people are judged based on skin color, while other superficial traits – like height, weight, clothing – are routinely used to judge people, and are considered completely acceptable.
Folks, there is a big difference between a personal preference for a particular physical trait — Manju prefering women with six toes, Bluebulb demanding three nipples — and a societally determined and enforced preference correlated, to a great extent, with hereditary social status. I’ve heard plenty of old desi aunties denigrating “kala”, linking it with “chamar”, or whatever else they think is bad. It’s not the same as a drunken frat boy dissing a “fattie”
(Totally offtopic, Razib wrote: narrative around tippu sultan, a muslim warlord . Seriously? What, next you’ll call Ranjit Singh a “Sikh terrorist”? Macaulay has worked wonders.)
That’s easily explained by the fact that there are much higher standards for talent to stand out in a population of 1 billion, as compared to a population of a few million.
What is wrong however is ridiculing and making fun of people in the public on that account. That is certainly bad manners and should not be tolerated.
I agree; It may hurt if someone isn’t attracted to me b/c of my dark skin, but I know I have attributes that I like in people. The problem with these ads, is that they are endorsing a product that is harmful to the skin, as far as I know, and openly approving of degrading someone b/c of their dark skin color. The Wow campaign is awesome to me – it’s not putting the beauty of someone who may have light-skin, but just saying dark skin is also beautiful and you don’t need to put on bleach, something that I can’t perceive as not being harmful to the human skin (any dermatologists around that can comment?).
And as far as losing weight, I see weight loss as a healthy thing. I have since grade school seen the fat children be badly bullied b/c of their weight, and these kids were white. Most things in the fashion industry cater to a type of weight that rarely do I see among most American peers, whether it is the right nose or space between the eyes, or height. But I would find it horrible if there were ads running in the US that showed a fat women going for job and being turned down, as the employers make snide remarks about her weight, and the solution was the father getting her to use some weight loss pills.
Say what you will about Michael Jackson, he obsessed over all races.
“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.”
. Been here for gadzillion years, had countless close encounters of the third and fourth kind with whites, and I’d say they do have a realization of different Indian looks. They’re not blind, but the distinctions they make or don’t make, are interesting. It has to do with the color spectrum Americans were used to dealing with. There was black, and a few mulattos, there was white, and then there were them Indians, as in Red Indians, the kind in westerns. Most people who were not in one of these groups, were seen as Caucasians. Even East Indians–they were brown Caucasians. Some non-European people sort of slid into the European color continuum because that’s how they were perceived at some visceral level. Only thing I can come up with. It’s all in the looks and general impression.
Americans of your generation have been conditioned not to mention such things. However, I do think they notice differences among features more than color differences in the case of Indians, unless the color is very light, and this has surprised my family at times. I think most do know about the varied “races” in India, but have a rather crude sense of the north-south dichotomy as being the explanation.
Comments like the one below has forced me out of lurkerhood:
I agree that the ad is obnoxious but I also agree with other commenters that the “fair is beautiful” notion in India is not equivalent to racism in the West. I’ll change my mind if someone can provide a reference that shows that people with darker skin have a harder time finding jobs in India. For what it’s worth, that problem certainly exists for overweight people in the west.
So, what’s wrong with believing fairer skin is more attractive? There are studies that suggest greater facial contrast is perceived as more feminine, so it seems intuitive that women who are fairer would be viewed as being more attractive. And let me clarify that I definitely fall in the darker half of the Indian population. Personally, I’ve never had to deal with hurtful comments about my skin color (but I’m sure it happens to others and that is certainly regrettable). All I’m saying is that I don’t see why everyone has to be viewed as being equally attractive. I’m fairly average in physical appearance but I still have plenty of other reasons for having high self-esteem.
Alright, I’ll disappear back into the shadows again now.
-V
I remember seeing an interview with Gweneth Paltrow about that movie “Shallow Hal” where she said similar thing about when she was wearing her fat suit. She went on to suggest that all attractive people should spend a few days in a fat-suit just to stay humble.
Vanya – Comments like the one below has forced me out of lurkerhood:
I would just treat anoop/prema as a troll.
And let me clarify that I definitely fall in the darker half of the Indian population. Personally, I’ve never had to deal with hurtful comments about my skin color (but I’m sure it happens to others and that is certainly regrettable). All I’m saying is that I don’t see why everyone has to be viewed as being equally attractive. I’m fairly average in physical appearance
Well-said. But do you like the ad that phillygrl writes about from the Wow organization?
well give him a break… being married to such a comedy and televison giant would take a toll on anyone’s confidence.
I’m so glad people are starting to see past this nonsense. I notice subtleties in advertising all the time, like how the inter-racial couples in Air India’s new campaign always feature white spouses. What, we can’t marry anyone else? Marrying outside the race is only OK, if the person is white? We seem to revel in our colonial roots instead of realizing the benefits of being who we are and leaving behind biases towards our own people. We shouldn’t complain then, ever of being discriminated against, because we’re guilty too.
That sounds awful. But I went to a wedding between and Indian woman and a white man recently, and no one in her family displayed this attitude. They were welcoming and loving without debasing themselves… I just felt the need to say this because of trolls like anoop/Prema.
I wouldn’t call preference for fairness ‘institutionalized’ if preference for someone thin isn’t. I think way, way, WAY more people, including aunties and uncles, care about thinness and height in a potential daughter-in-law than they do fairness. And it’s something that their sons obviously will care about too. I wouldn’t call that ‘institutionalized’ though, that makes it sound like it’s some kind of edict, when it’s culture.
What about when someone realizes that people don’t find her as beautiful because she’s fat? Would you say that’s equivalent?
oh right, how could I forget, you’re the expert on white people, aren’t you?
that may be your point, but you essentially said that white people won’t notice skin color gradations, when that’s obviously too much of a generalization. since they do, which i know from personal experience… in fact many times people have commented to me ‘so-and-so bollywood actor/actress is really light-skinned’ or even sometimes ‘they don’t look indian.’
and my point is that everything doesn’t revolve around white people for many south asians, even ones who live in the united states. if they prefer someone with fairer skin, it’s fairer skin WITHIN THE SOUTH ASIAN CONTEXT, obviously not in a white context. yeah it may be wrong, but people responding to it by saying ‘well white people don’t care’ basically seem to be saying that only what white people think matters. which is kind of fucked up.
Basically, I mean to say, even the stupidest most ignorant white person in the world should be able to tell the difference between Aishwarya Rai and Prabhu Deva.
Many fat people would disagree with you. Fat is associated with lazy, poor moral character, stupid, etc…. many bad qualities.
That’s silly. If someone jacks my car, I shouldn’t complain because some other Indian person somewhere in the world jacked someone else’s car?
Huh? Is that in the American context? I know quite a few ‘typical’ people from the UK and Australia, for instance, travel to India (people who don’t go there just to get stoned etc.).
PS: anoop = prema / bhima / Dhoni…?
Dork is beautiful.
Indians are quite racist indeed. I noticed that Punjabis, especially, have the most racial elitism. Just my Rs.2.
Pinto is overrated. And personally I feel Pinto is nothing much to look at. Even Time magazine put Pinto in a worst of all time list. It does not matter if Pinto was photographed in B&W or colour, the world would have been better off without Pinto.
BTW you misspelled Ford
I think one way of synthesizing the comments here is that they reflect disagreement about the perniciousness of “colorism” in desi-culture. In the West, a history of slavery and racial discrimination has led to “colorism” being banned and to the enforcement of social norms that constrain its being discussed in public in a disparaging way. Presumably, though, we don’t want to/can’t afford to bring out the “big guns” of the law and shaming norms for every form of discrimination–for example, few think that preferences over issues like which color clothing is worn or over food preferences (e.g., there are those in my family who won’t eat with non-veg’s, but there isn’t much of a movement in the US to outlaw that–they’re sufficiently idiosyncratic that the effect of their discrimination doesn’t get totalizing or pervasive) merit legal or aggressive non-legal stamping-out. So, the debate is really over whether colorism in desi-culture is merely distasteful at times but lacking in sufficient stigmatization, etc. to merit getting out the “big guns,” or over whether it is in fact pernicious enough to warrant being put in the relatively small camp of dimensions of discrimination that we try to stamp out.
Let’s also not get too carried away with justifying the dislike of “fat people” by saying fat=unhealthy, and therefore by hating on fat people you are somehow advancing health causes. You don’t like fat because you find that particular superficial quality unattractive, and that’s fine by me. Just don’t paint everything with some sort of altruistic brush.
Also, this “Dark is Beautiful” campaign, and even that campaign by Dove where they used curvy women are just silly attempts to alter perception. For the most part no one has to tell a person what he/she should consider attractive. Any attempt to “shame” people who have superficial preferences by calling them names like “racist” is nothing but snobbish bullying.
au contraire, its almost universally acknowledged that pinto gets excruciatingly hot when rear ended.
Manju you’re talking about a Gremlin.
This thing about whites being stupid because they can’t recognize the various shades of brown is just bizarre. It would be like expecting browns to distinguish between the various ethnicities of white. And really, who cares?
As for changing the beauty ideal(I hate to admit it) Manju made the best point:
the image is more powerful than the word.
Wow. I’m shocked at the level of ignorance here. Posters on SM consider themselves so educated but many peope aren’t using common sense. People that argue that this isn’t related to racism always argue the followig bad points:
1.Dark skin was associated with working outdoors while light skin is associated with the indoor elite: The most basic amount of common sense should dictate that this is inappropriate for dark-skinned races/nations whose dark skin cannot be equated with a suntan! This is also stupidly forgetting that dark skin is genetic and will be inherited by the elite of that nation. All and I mean all cases of light-skinned elites within dark-skinned nations have been the cause of invasion and mainly Western Imperialism, not by staying indoors. Get real people. And so what if there are naturally light-skinned Indians. There are full-blooded light-skinned Africans! Something or someone has to influence favoritism toward that group over the natural darker complexions unless you think it’s just natural to prefer light-skin which would be another bad assumption.
Now if the elites in India are disproportionately lighter skinned than regular Indians than that would still have something to do with their ancestry and therefore race. India has been invaded many times by foreign nations and this might be the reason for the light skin of the upper class if this state of things is precolonial . Just because this has gone on for centuries doesn’t make it right for people to ignorantly associate the darker skin of the indigenous indians with working outdoors! That would be just as stupid as of passing off Latin America’s skin color/racial hierarchy as simply lack or abundance of sunexposure if it were to continue for thousands of years.
Here’s my response to the arguement that this is precolonial:
Colorism dates back to the Aryan Invasion/Migration: This theory has been debunked and is obsolete, yet it continues to be taught in Indian schools
All of India’s invaders/rulers were light skinned: The assumption being that because Persians, Arabs, Mongolians, the Turkish etc. were lighter relative to the indigenous Indians, they must have used their lighter skin as a badge of superiority over the darker native population. This is projecting a European construction of racial superiority onto other nations just because they were “light-skinned.” Unless anyone has historical proof that these nations made Indians feel inferior because they were darker, don’t assume it. Another thing: there can be color differences between conqueror and native; elite and non-elite and for skin color to not be an issue. It’s not like light-skin superiority is natural. Someone has to intentionally make it a matter of difference or inadequacy. And don’t assume that all light-skinned nations behaved this way. There are so many other ways human beings can make petty differences between themselves besides skin color.
Bollywood isn’t racist. It’s run by Desis: So what? There were old films in the 1920/30s that starred only light-skinned blacks made by blacks. Is it not imitating white bodies just because all involved are black? That’s why there’s something called internalized racism. It’s when a group of people perpetrates a form of prejudice on themselves that was practiced against them from outsiders. Bollywood didn’t get is name from nowhere. Not only did it set out to mimic the professional film quality of Hollywood, but it mimicked (and still does) the white standard of beauty in an Indian form.
Tall height for a man, a nice waist hip ratio on a woman, a slender build etc are justifiable human preferences because they indicate human health. From an evolutionary standpoint, the preceding characteristics ensured the ability to protect one’s family, fertility and overall survival of the species respectively. From a Creationist standpoint (I’m Creationist) Adam and Eve as the first humans possessed all of these ideal physical traits because they were made perfect. Ever since the Fall, however, sin has degraded mankind physically and spiritually from this ideal. Whichever story you believe, in the fact is that universally humans innately prefer the above physical traits because we are remembering in a sense the physical ideal we have deteriorated from. The current thinness obsession is just a sick manmade beauty standard like the valuing of fat bodies was in the Old World. Neither one is healthy or a natural preference.
Skin color on the other hand, is related to race which is socially constructed. How one reacts to differences in complexion or even if they notice it at all would be the result of social conditioning. Dark skinned “races” or nations did not originally lust after pale skin. Ancient Africa, the Ancient Americas, the Middle East and yes India were strongly proud of their natural complexions (read The Travels by Marco Polo). This light skin over dark colorism is a recent phenomenon that is primarily due to white global dominance. The only exception in my opinion would be East Asia or any light skinned nation where the indoors-outdoors explanation would truly be applicable.
This was a very long post but I had something to say.
Ikram, the examples on display– weight and straight hair within the black community (the chris rock movie link)–both fall arguably within the “societally determined and enforced preference correlated, to a great extent, with hereditary social status” category.
90gem,
What color where Adam and Eve?
For an example of a “light skinned” nation where skin color didn’t matter look at Ancient Rome. I’m sure the Romans conquered many civilizations that were darker than them, such as ancient Nubia, Moab or Elam. Roman slaves came from all over, most were from Europe yet, there was no skin color hierarchy with the Ancient Romans. A blond fair-skinned Celt was considered just as much an alien as a black skinned Nubian. The only people whom the Romans considered superior were themselves.
My point is that Indians including those posting here are taking colorism so much for granted that they’re unable to connect it to the larger picture of world history and racism or why some can’t see the difference between body preferences (justifiable) and skin color brainwashing (not justifiable). Preferences for lighter complexiones would be free of any racist undertones if it hadn’t been the result of racial subjucation or Imperialism.
Let’s rewind. If Europe had not ruled the world or if a dark skinned nation were the global rulers most of the world inhabitants would not want lighter skin.
Or… If India didn’t care about skin color and had an equal appreciation for all skin tones –the result would be that actresses, singers and journalists would range the full rainbow, no one would object to a potential spouse because of their complexion and therefore men’s preferences would not all be skewed toward fair-skinned women. Personal preferences are variable and are to be acquired on one’s own not spoon fed by society’s prejudices. The fact that South Asian men overwhelmingly desire a fair bride proves that their ‘preference’ was mass induced not individually acquired
In addition to public praise and family pressure, TV’s exclusive portrayal of fair-skinned women as beautiful has affected the subconscious of countless Indian men who have been bombarded with these images since childhood. Therefore it formed their first impressions of beauty. Had men seen dark-skinned women as glamorous actresses on TV and movies since childhood then that would have formed what they considered beautiful. Images are powerful things. Brainwashing (and lies) is as much omission as it is addition.
The problem is not the preference. The crux of the matter is the context of how it happened
Madam-n-Steve,
They were brown. They were made out of dirt (not sand LOL!) and dirt is brown.
By dirt, you mean soil? If so, I have seen black soil, red soil and brown soil. Why do you think brown soil was picked?
LoL! Madam and Steve!
Any soil color would prove they definitely weren’t Fair and Lovely!
If dark skin is undervalued, then there should be plenty of otherwise good looking (tall, good figure, uniform tone and pleasant features) Indians who are being discounted due to their darker skin. Which means the field is relatively open for those who dont care to discriminate on skin tone. It should even out, should it not? I suspect that in fact skin tone (at least in India) is correlated with other aspects we care about and so even without the class and caste status marker function, skin color might actually trigger a response by virtue of this correlation. And perhaps in those groups where this correlation is greatest, one would see the highest degree of light skin color preference (punjabis?) and less in groups where such a correlation is murky at best (southies?).
“au contraire, its almost universally acknowledged that pinto gets excruciatingly hot when rear ended.”
Funny you should mention that. I was in a Pinto (a type of car, not the actress, that was known for spontaneously igniting) in 1981, and it did spontaneously ignite. We shot out of it as soon as we saw the smoke curling up out of the hood, and three minutes later the flames were two stories high. Never saw such nervous firemen.
“This light skin over dark colorism is a recent phenomenon that is primarily due to white global dominance.”
Aren’t those dominators all in tanning booths? Nobody’s satisfied. Come on, possums. The Indian hyper-awareness of color predates the freckled conquerers. It goes way back in the mid-east, and is present in the Bible–references to fairness being equated with beauty are pretty common, though i couldn’t quote you chapter and verse; and it goes way back in India too, though if you go back far enough, the really cool people were all blue skinned and if you weren’t blue, you just weren’t in. Who wants to be blue today? You do have a good point about the indoor-outdoor status thing though. That is clearly traceable in America, with the advent of vacations at the beach beginning in 19th and early 20th centuries, and the decline of the percentage of people working in the fields. You had to look like you had been in sun and fun without looking as if you had done any work. Let’s just all be glad that this “fair” preference ain’t what it used to be.
It has been proven that most of the Indians(except probably Sindhis) doesn’t belong to different races. You can do some reading (like this one) before writing blatantly. I refuse to take anymore of the Aryan/Dravidian shit theories.
This is the ignorance that I’m talking about. You completely missed the point about how Indians’ dark skin can’t be equated with a suntan. I’m an avid Bible reader and fair as in “of fair counteance” in Old English simply meant beautiful and since then the meaning has changed to skin color, justice, free, of bias, of sizable amount etc.
The Free Dictionary says 1. Of pleasing appearance, especially because of a pure or fresh quality; comely. [archaic] 2. a. Light in color, especially blond: fair hair. b. Of light complexion: fair skin. 3. Free of clouds or storms; clear and sunny: fair skies. 4. Free of blemishes or stains; clean and pure: one’s fair name. 5. Promising; likely: We’re in a fair way to succeed.
Regarding the Middle East, their light-skin bias is also from Colonialism. There’s Pre Islamic and precolonial Arab poetry to praising brown skin, dark hair and dark eyes particularly for Arab Gulf States. Ask an Arab scholar.