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:
fair or dark skin the body is going to decay one day. The soul will have to take the body of dark or fair skin according to the karma it generates. Not only that there is no guarantee the soul will take only human birth. it may be the body of a dog or hog or stool.
So why not attain liberation? To get away from this non-sense cycle of repeated births and deaths one should get “SARANAGADHI” and that is possible only in South India. Because great Azwaars and Acharyas took birth there only.
Fair “1. Of pleasing appearance, especially because of a pure or fresh quality; comely. [archaic]”
What comes first? The chicken or the eggs? Until the 20th century, even the English used parasols and sun bonnets. Your examples are sort of proving my point.
“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.”
I have seen it. The middle east people were far more eclectic about color and did sometimes like “honey” colored skin. Fact is, pale was GENERALLY preferred, at least for women. It’s not really even worth arguing. I am recalling some Persians friends singing an old song about a girl with a face like a pale moon. That’s pretty light. In fact, there is so much color bias in ancient Persian attitudes and sayings, that it much be due to that Aryan demon.
Colonialism in the middle east? wtf are you talking about? Europeans never settled there in any numbers. Were they that influenced by pictures of Marilyn Monroe? Or Queen Victoria?
Even applied to India, colonialism as an explanation for color preference it makes little sense. The independent Afghans were hardly likely to give a camel-poop what the British admired for looks. The Indians didn’t admire British looks particularly. It is pathetic. However we paint ourselves, we are not that much of dupes. Don’t kid yourself. We have to take responsibility. The Ottoman Empire, there was a long history of capturing east Europeans and Greeks, for use as slaves. In the Balkans, Christians were routinely taken from villages and many Janissairies. I met a man from Tunisia who was descended from them. He looked a little like Michael Keaton. Southern Russia provided Circassians for the harems and to judge from photos, they were mostly whities. Arabs certainly had less invested in colorism than other countries, but overall, they can range from white to quite dark, and guess which was more preferred for the ladies. I’m certainly not apologizing colorism. I’d barely pass the Bollywood test myself, but you delude yourself in blaming all this on Europeans or “others.” They were not anybody’s aesthetic model years ago. They just used the prejudices already in place when “fair is lovely” was the rule, though there were of course, many connoisseurs of the darker skin. Also, as has been pointed out, the Indian idea of “fair” is not the “fair” blonde of England, which it really should be if we are that much mind-controlled by those “colonialists” who made up about .0000099% of the total Indian population, at their height, and have been in decline ever since.
You are free to believe the pasties are responsible for all our color woes, but I think it’s silly. We need to look in the mirror on this one. Like I said, it ain’t what it used to be anyway.
jeez.
The “I have heard aunties associate “kala” with chamars” comment. Point on. Finally something worth sharing thats not part of some bogus conjecture. Well I am an Assamese, with skin that qualifies for white/gold, but slight mongoloid features (North father, NE mother) So I have been treated as an underclass or herrenvolk depending on which part of India I worked/studied in. These very personal experiences became a serious issue for me as I went about dodging and finally confronting the identity crisis that beset me. Just when I was at peace with my situation I would face a racist slur or a deep compliment that would stir the subterranean insecurities I had quelled with a great amount of difficulty. My experience taught me – that the North Indians, the Punjabis in particular are racist in the purest connotation of the word, while the South Indians tend to be racist more out of ignorance than ill will. Over the years I have come to admire my southern compatriots and I have made some of my best friends while on site in the US amongst Tamils and Andhraites at various levels (even second generation ones) If there is any decency that is left in our culture it is a preserve of the Bengal and the Indian South. These Northern Neanderthals find infinite comfort for their insecurities by relating to Whites, even if it places them at the bottom of the White heirarchy. Just watch how these Punjab/Haryanavis make a beeline to immigrate for blue collar jobs, and yet have the most garish claims of patriotism, while the Tamils and the NEs, are “traitors”. Bollywood, for some reason lionizes this faux-patriotism and fans their venal belief that they and their gaudy, materialistic and infanticidal culture is at the core of ‘Indianness’. If anything, these people are not entirely Indian, they are extracts of Scythian and Hun invasions. They will never be as smart or as traditionally Indian as the Bengali or Tamil Brahmins and will make good second rate Whites at best. If there has to be any movement against color prejudice it must come from Bengal or the South as all movements have in the past, but it will definitely involve trimming down the Northerners to size. Something like Tamil chauvanism (Tamil for the mother tongue!) or Bengali priggishness. Yeah.
KolaNutTechie@105: WTF? How did we go from skin color to a Tam-Bong cabal?
For the upthread discussion on weight and other factors, there are three types of factors:
factors that we’re evolutionarily biased towards as indicators of good physical and mental health. These include things like optimum weight, a healthy appearance (including a healthy mane of whatever size/shape), or wittiness, or a good emotional quotient.
factors that each of us has a preference for as individuals, like hair length or hair twistiness, or the “oriental looks” that someone mentioned. The commonality here is that we’re rarely expected by parents or peers to select based on these factors, nor do they dislike a potential child-in-law because of these features.
factors that are driven more by social expectations, like skin color, or eye color, or thick lips, or thrusty breasts, or religiosity, or whatever. These are factors that we’re “expected” to select for, and it would raise a few eyebrows if we didn’t. (“I don’t know what he saw in that dark-skinned, flat-chested, idol-worshipping girl”)
Individual choices can trump all three types, but it’s much easier to overrule Type 3 than Type 1. Some individuals may make a conscious and personal choice to select for skin color, in which case the real debate is over whether skin color is Type 3 or Type 2. But don’t conflate it with Type 1: skin color preference is not evolutionary like indicators of health, and changing a skin color preference (if you want to) doesn’t require you to fight a billion years of evolution.
Talk about a back-handed compliment. The only thing that your analysis tells me is how deeply you’ve been scarred by the prejudices you faced. I can empathize — but intellectually — this is nonsense on stilts.
“I don’t know what he saw in that dark-skinned, flat-chested, idol worshipping girl”– Best thing I’ve heard all day. Can absolutely see an Auntie saying that:)
pingpong wrote:
Not necessarily. According to Razib, light skin among the females of a population is supposed to be an indicator of high estrogen levels, and, by extension, high fertility rates.
The bias for lighter tone also exists in Brazil (also many countries of South America), China, Japan, Korea and most of Asia. I find it really funny when people say that tan look is better. And who decides that ? Western Media or Western Society. Just because tan look is cool in US, it has to be cool in India too? Every society is free to decide their own standards of beauty whatever they may be. Why having anglo-greek features is considered beautiful in US? Why taller is considered better? Why starved skanky girls considered beautiful in Western Society? India does not need to follow each and everything blindly ..
Kola Nut (#106)
I don’t know why you conflate all of North India with Punjab. This is something that several people from south India have done to me over the years. NIs in desh look at whites as a good source of money for their businesses (this may range from high end businesses to selling several tolas of charas, to simple ripping them off at the Taj Mahal) , amusing touristic specimens, or, shamefully, potentially easy lay. Apart from that, they don’t relate much to them one way or the other. As people have mentioned before on this thread, Indian notion of fair is not the caucasian skin colour. It is a lighter shade of brown, possibly a shade of olive.
They are not the only type of Indians that do blue collar work abroad. Think Dubai. Think London. And this traitor thing is news to me. Why do you think they would call them that? have they done anything to deserve this label? Again I think you are letting your imagination soar.
You forgot to insert the mandatory ‘Hail Mogambo’ that is required when you make these type of proclamations.
Pingpong, I most of your category 3 criteria actually fit category 2. Category 3 should actually be caste and religion (and now after new legistlations, gender). Skin colour straddles categories 1, 2 and 3. (For example, a fair girl/boy marrying a rich, successful, dark skinned person from the same caste would be far more acceptable, even welcome, as compared to them marrying a poor, socially disadvantaged dark person of a different caste/religion).
That is BS. There is no evidence that light skinned females are more fertile than dark skinned females.
Taller is not considered more beautiful for females. The fetish for females of east asian (chinese, japanese, korean) and southeast asian (vietnamese, filipino, thai, burmese) ancestry is rampant in the West and these females are shorter and darker compared to nordic females.
Also, a fair girl/boy marrying a rich, successful, dark skinned person from the same caste or religion would be far more acceptable, even welcome, as compared to them marrying a poor, socially disadvantaged fair person of a different caste/religion
The upper castes of India are themselves very dark-skinned. The colonial notion that caste is somehow connected to skin color is a falsehood used by the white colonial conquerors to manipulate and subdue the gullible hindu natives, similar to how the europeans manipulated the africans in Rwanda by setting up the taller and “sharper-featured” Tutsis as superior to the shorter, broader-nosed Hutus.
The average low caste sudra and outcaste chamar of Punjab is lighter than the average brahmin. Bollywood is full of sudras like Aishwarya Rai and muslims like all the khan superstars.
Black Godmen dude, You misread me. I said the same caste, not upper, middle or lower caste.
It felt to me that color prejudice was going down in India, and maybe the only people who still retain it most are those who immigrated the West in the 60’s. I don’t hear people talking about skin color that much anymore when I go back, at least not in Bombay. My one Bollywood actress cousin is like one of the darkest-complected in the family and noone really uses the abominable “dark but pretty” aphorism that was so common in my mom’s or grandmother’s time. It’s true that noone wanted the pasty skin of the British, but I think having two or three generations grow up without “No Dogs or Indians Allowed” signs has at least subconsciously made some difference .
I feel for all the crap my darker-skinned sisters went through, and color prejudice is ignorant and stupid, but we need to stop hating on ourselves as the most racist ethnicity in the world. It is seriously there in every community. My Persian friends say it’s even worse in theirs’- apparently browner-skinned Iranians are mortally offended if they are mistaken for Indian or Latino, and many wanted to riot against “The 300” because they were represented as having dark skin. Some of them occasionally join Stormfront for heavens sake because they are so proud of their “Aryan” blood. Maybe the entire world needs a wakeup call?
Heh. True, but why look externally when we have homegrown idiots doing the same thing?
Rip 60s (how old are you?)
You seem quite brainwashed yourself. The ancients didn’t care about being pale.
“What comes first? The chicken or the eggs? Until the 20th century, even the English used parasols and sun bonnets. Your examples are sort of proving my point. “
Let me break it down for you babe: You mentioned the Bible which takes place in the Middle East. You’re confusing the English LANGUAGE with how Bible characters looked. Old English –which is from the Middle Ages –used the word fair IN PLACE OF beautiful. One did not have to be light-skinned to be described as having a “fair countenance.” As the English language has evolved words have taken on different meanings and the world fair had nothing to do with skin color originally. Read a different translation of the Bible such as New King James Version and those same texts that used fair in OLD English will read ‘lovely or beautiful’ in the new.
Lets break it down further: If there were Ethiopian poems describing women as beautiful and if these were translated into Old English the word ‘fair’ would be substituted in place of beautiful in Amharic. It’s simply an older language from a different part of the world (Europe) describing people as attractive in another part of the world (Middle East) using words differently from a different time period. Kapeesh?
“I have seen it. The middle east people were far more eclectic about color and did sometimes like “honey” colored skin. Fact is, pale was GENERALLY preferred, at least for women.”
Where’s your evidence? As in books. I’d like to see it. Of course light-skinned nations had pride in their ethnic beauty, but so did dark-skinned nations such as India! Btw don’t use Persia to represent the whole Middle East. That’s why I said ARAB GULF STATES.
“Colonialism in the middle east? wtf are you talking about? Europeans never settled there in any numbers. Were they that influenced by pictures of Marilyn Monroe? Or Queen Victoria?”
Um, apparently so. Hollywood has been digested worldwide. Take a look at Arab and Iranian actors. They’re quite European looking. Europeans don’t have to settle anywhere in huge numbers for their influence to be felt worldwide including in beauty standards. You’re hairsplitting man.
“Even applied to India, colonialism as an explanation for color preference it makes little sense. The independent Afghans were hardly likely to give a camel-poop what the British admired for looks.”
Then try today. The British altered how Indians view their own caste system and made Indians internalize their views of race and distorted Indian history such as the Aryan Invasion Myth.
“The Indians didn’t admire British looks particularly.”
Then what do you call Bollywood being dominated by Anglo Indians, Jews, or light skinned punjabis who could pass as white?Internalized racism doesn’t have to be carbon copies of the rulers mainly because they CAN’T look exactly white, but they’ll try to get as close as possible.
“In fact, there is so much color bias in ancient Persian attitudes and sayings, that it could be due to that Aryan demon.”
See. This is why I say it’s Europeans because that Ayran nonsense and other categories was made up BY them, but you’re too duped into taking all these constructs for granted that you can’t see outside it. I’m through arguing. I’m speaking to a wall.
. “The fetish for females of east asian (chinese, japanese, korean) and southeast asian (vietnamese, filipino, thai, burmese) ancestry is rampant in the West and these females are shorter and darker compared to nordic females.”
Such fetishes exist and sometimes it just comes down to strong preferences, so be careful about putting all in some fetish basket. A fetish is obsessive and majes objects of its interests–hence the Indian abhorrence of being described as “exotic.” Preferences are just preferences, like you prefer blue over green. Studies have been done to find out the response of various races to the idea of mating/dating with other races. Indians are about in the middle on that scale, as far as openess to interracial dating. By and large, most people want ideals that exist within their “own kind.” East Asian females are the most open to dating interracially, mostly whites. Asian females are pragmatic about marriage and don’t actively seek to marry out of their race–they’re just adaptable; white men for the most part did not have an Asian-lady obsession (though some certainly do, and tend to be vocal about it), but were just ” open” to dating East Asians. Since similar socio-economic situations often obtain for these groups, they get together fairly easily. But all that aside….skin color and features don’t seem to be a bar to attracting love and attention. Most people marry or have significant relationships. Even the losers get lucky sometimes.
However, if you really and truly want to know what are people’s deepest preferences in these areas, it’s not so much who they date, because personality, and other factors come into play. Offspring–children, not mates or dates, are our genetic expression. Look at whom we would choose if we were buying sperm and/or eggs in a fertility clinic. That would be educational. Because of my age bracket I’ve seen that over the years and have done some research. As far as European and American whites go, the stereotypical preference pans out — another surpise to me. Eggs/sperm, from tall, healthy blondes with high SATs, do in fact fetch the highest price generally speaking. There are outliers, people who want something entirely different; but always, when looking for what matters to people, follow the money, what people are willing to pay. Or rather what the clinics are willng to pay in response to demand. Supply and demand hold the key to desires.
What other ethnicities are willing to pay for is their own business. How about us? It’s a lot harder to find out what the Indians and East Asians are choosing, but let’s just say in the case of Indians it’s a pretty easy guess. The donors would have to be stratospherically high-level achievers. We probably demand the higher achieving donors than anywhere else in the world. I’ll bet more people than you’d expect would try to match caste, but would rather have it done ahead of time so they don’t have to embarrass themselves. Achievement and smarts should be ideally linked to a certain types of looks. All things being equal, and if they have a choice, what do you think would be the preference? Clue? well–let’s say the ITT, Aish look-alike graduate who can vault 6 foot fences, could probably sell her genetic material and live comfortably on the proceeds for the rest of her life. Or his–depending on the donor.
Genetic engineering is still mostly sci-fi, but the clones are here and babies with 3 parents are on the horizon. This was sci-fi when I was in school, and likely to be just routine before I’m even ready to retire. When they can choose, people of all types will have to face their demons in ways they don’t when there is no choice. Who knows. Maybe someday we’ll be able to turn our skin whatever color we feel like for the day.
True dat. This kind of internalized racism so common in India = racial self-loathing.
Albino indians are the closest indians can get to the western ideal of the pinkish blond nordic european look, but even in racially servile India white albinos remain pariahs, and indians have to settle for the west asian muslim look (swarthy by european standards but very fair in India), which is found in a small minority of indians, as the epitome of “indian” beauty.
Awww, I wrote that two years ago. Good times. 🙂 He really was an idiot.
Also, I was told “For such a dark girl, you are actually pretty” last month.
Last.
Month.
The Auntie who bestowed that gift of a compliment came to this country in the 80s, so she was able to move immediately to a city with a full-fledged (not just Desi– Malayalee) community, which enabled her to stay away from those strange white, black and other people; insulated among her own, nothing and no one challenged the worst of her views.
It saddens me to see such ignorance attributed to the ’60s gen/my parents and their peers. Many of them came here alone, lived in barely-diverse places while they went to school (Nebraska, anyone?) and as a result, had to get over cultural baggage very quickly. My father once mentioned how after a few lonely months after he arrived, he was elated to meet a fellow Desi student of Pakistani descent. “It was just nice to see a familiar face.” More than fair skin, newly-drawn geographical lines, caste or anything else, he and his friends worried about rent, unfamiliar (and in his case, non-veg) food, and the long periods of time before another aerogram arrived from the other side of the world.Three years later, when he met someone from Mysore, he said it was like one of his own siblings had arrived.
People with back stories like that don’t insult my, my mother’s, my sister’s complexions. More recent arrivals from Fair-and-Lovely-land do. And when I wasn’t around other Malayalees, I had Punjabi Aunties in NorCal to do the insulting, instead (most notably during college, while I was working as a teller in Fremont– I could write a whole other post, because the assumption they carried was that my parents weren’t from India– I was too dark). I’m glad that people in Mumbai are over it. Too many of their counterparts here are not.
You are writing a lot of confused nonsense. Try a reality check: hindus are not “embarrassed” at all to insist on a mate from the same sub-caste (caste is too broad for these inbreds); Light-eyed Aish is low caste south indian; ITT graduates usually tend to be dark-skinned; vaulting or any other athletic skills are not in demand in the indian mating market; blond sperm donors should be preferable to what passes for “fair” in India if you want your kids not to look as dark and indian as you…….
Not confused Black Godmen, just getting sleepy. Shouldn’t you include Blue Godmen, btw? I have not been back to India since the early 70s, mostly through choice. So let our fantasy egg-donor Aish ITT grad be high caste, with the brains of Srinivasa Ramanujan. Indians don’t do pole vaulting? Damn. But you see, this a hypothetical egg donor whose recipient couple are relocating from Mumbai to Los Angeles, ok?
My point remains. It has to do with supply and demand in fertility clinics telling us something about peoples’ deepest desires and biases.
“You are writing a lot of confused nonsense. Try a reality check…”
Haha! Black Godmen I love you! Btw are you Indian? I’m just curious. I find a lot of SM posters are apologists for this revolting “preference,” but you’re a breath of fresh air!
A lot?
The vast majority of our commenters and lurkers think such unexamined “preferences” are revolting, too. I haven’t read every comment left on this site over the past five years, but I’ve read more of them than most people, so I’ll vouch for “a lot of SM posters” because they are NOT apologists for colorism.
Finally, as one might expect, this thread is taking a turn for the worse– please try to respond to each other without being uncivil if you want this space to remain available for unpacking this always controversial, always sensitive issue. It’s great if you know more about topic A or B, but there’s no need to insult people while you’re responding to them. Capiche?
Except people in Mumbai obviously aren’t over it… just look at Bollywood. People like Katrina Kaif and Neil Nitin Mukesh are leading ‘stars.’ Or southern film… actresses like Trisha and Nayantara are obviously south Indian, but very few Indian, let alone south Indian women, are as light-skinned as they are.
I get my darkness commented on more when I am in India than when I am in America. There it’s just a topic of conversation. I try not to get my panties in a bunch over it, although it is annoying to have your relatives apparently talking about how dark you got since the last time you visited, when you’re not even there. Generalizations about India or the Indian-American community really don’t hold much weight (except this one of course 😉 ).
Also, I get MANY more comments along the lines of ‘you have such a pretty face, you just need to lose weight’ than I do about skin color. I think that’s more common now than commenting on skin color is, at least based on what I’ve seen.
I get annoyed by other desis judging me for not wanting to stay in the sun too long though. I think it’s a very personal and sensitive matter to most people though..
Black Godmen = Prema
Hey Old Monk. I am not conflating North Indian with Punjabi, having lived in Delhi, I can tell the Punjabis/Haryanavis apart and where they come together. This is an interesting observation on Delhi by Rana Dasgupta: http://www.granta.com/Magazine/107/Capital-Gains/1 and I don’t think you can spell Delhi without Punjabi. And where were the black IPL cheerleaders told they weren’t white enough – was it Chandigarh? And Kerala is unusual in many ways, it is a microcosm of India, with sharp ethnic and religious divisions complicated by glut of gulf money, so you will find the state has the same problems that the India does on the whole. But if you want to discover the old benign Indian culture that values frugality, tolerance and balances it with a conscientious pursuit of materialism visit Bangalore/Chennai/Hyderabad. Thats how India should strive to be.
I’d like to draw everybody’s attention to the post 96 by saxon:
“Well said raj. These are the wisest words ever written, homie. Indians should stop whining over the losing hand dealt by God and begin the process of introspection. Ask yourselves why? Why are indians so dark-skinned and unattractive? The answer is obvious if you are wise: bad karma.”
What exactly does this mean? Saxon care to elaborate what you meant here?
KolaNutTechie: your comments on this thread are disturbing at best, bigoted at worst. Consider this your final warning.
Commenter tbh: stop looking for and complaining about what isn’t there.
Commenter Taye_Diggs_Is_Superfine: He was being sarcastic.
Some of you are engaging in trollish behavior. Stop it.
SM Intern,
I’ve heard that term before. What is exactly trollish behavior?
SM Intern wrote:
Guys, you might want to be careful. You could get banned without any warning whatsoever (like I was).
Dear Friends
Color preferences have been alway there and will always. Even in pre colonial Africa, lighter shades were preferred. That in itself has not been an issue in those times
But today it has become polarizing because
Hark back a few centuries back or go to Africa say Niger.. people there won’t be talking so much about color since most would be of same color. That is why the psychology of the Black or African American is more affected due to the constant deluge of media/non-white peers et al compared to that the Black or African living in Africa.
The times we live make these differences sharper and more painful.
Color preferences may not change, but we can certainly make people more sensitive about making disparaging comments, humiliating, media behaviour (especially advertisements etc) America has come a long way in color/racial sensitivity due the peculiarities of its history, but the others countries are far behind.
And Anna 39, Kolatechnic (39)does say some umpleasant truths, I don’t if he should be published. If we can talk of caste, brahmins, women issues freely, why not region stuff. Burying will not make it go away.
But picking on Punjabi’s may not be the right thing. Every body who is very fair, behaves in similar manner. There Tamil brahmins who are fair but may be used to many darkskinned brethren as well, hence their tolerance level is higher. But within a same family you will see different levels of skin tone and discrimination as well.
These issues as mentioned earlier are in sharper focus due to movement of people away from their native environment, media (newspaper/TV/radio) et al. There is no total cure for this.. .Education for sensitivity towards such can go a long way though.
But to shout from rooftops — dark skin is beuatiful is at best self delusional.
Raj
Sorry — what I meant is opposite of what got typed! It should be
“I don’t know if he should be punished and not published!!!!”
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.
@Lata (#57): Anchal Joseph is one of the most beautiful models to ever appear on “America’s Next Top Model.” And she’s dark-skinned. Trust me, if you have a great personality and look anything like Anchal Joseph, any sane guy with good eyesight, desi or non-desi, would be proud to have you as his wife.
Saxon
Where I equate black with ugly? That logic would be akin to sayingall short/fat.. people are ugly!
BTW: there are many topnotch actresses in bollywood who are relatively dark. Or none of them are lily white — Kajol, Priyanka Chopra, Kareen Kapur, Rani Mukherjee, Mallika Sherawat etc.
Beauty has various aspects to it. Color is only one but not all.
saxon: Well said raj. All Indians should accept the fact that they are ugly because they are dark, as most indians already do.
roflmao thats not what all the naughty white girls are saying…. they really like daaark because real daaark = real biiig where it matters 😉
tongue or wallet, nash?
i would like to add my voice to the outrage over color preference here. i really hate it when my relatives compliment my skin tone. as a kid, auntijis were constantly coming up to me at the BSOU and asking me to meet their daughter. i knew they were thinking about light complexioned grand-kids and i wanted nothing to do with it so i just jumped in my s-class and sped away. it not just Indians, even when i went to school up in cambridge, MA Americans would ask me if i were Greek or Italian. i was so disgusted i wanted to throw my size 12 shoes at them but in my profession i took an oath of Primum non nocere.
“Trust me, if you have a great personality and look anything like Anchal Joseph”
whats with the belated claim of “a great personality”
“Except people in Mumbai obviously aren’t over it… just look at Bollywood. People like Katrina Kaif and Neil Nitin Mukesh are leading ‘stars.’ Or southern film… actresses like Trisha and Nayantara are obviously south Indian, but very few Indian, let alone south Indian women, are as light-skinned as they are.”
India is mainly a nation of dark skinned people. But they like fair skinned politicians, bollywood actors, daughter in laws.
Do you know for eg, light complexioned politicians (think Rahul, Priyanka, Sonia), have a huge advantage over dark skinned politicians. The nature of the majority of human beings is such that they think emotionally more than logically. This quality is exploitable and is well advantage of all. both by the fair and dark. I am just stating the facts. Nothing to do with karma, or caste, it is just human emotion.
Did fair skin bring in the voters? http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/India/Did-fair-skin-bring-in-the-voters/articleshow/4558057.cms
On another note Ebony magazine of African Americans is full of part lightly tanned African Americans. No one has forced them to do it, but apparently even before colonial times, there has been a preference for lighter tan in traditional africa. The goes in other parts of the world .. China, Europe, Japan etc.
I don’t understand how some people concluded: “All prefer light”. I am very light skinned but have always and always will have a pathological obsession with dusky girls. I loathe my skin that is too fair for a guy and want a dusky woman (coffee colored, not coffee bean colored but definitely coffee colored) It may sound strange, but I have always been clear about my preference. So I find it very hard to believe that a lighter skinned mate can be a universal preference. There must be others like me. Yes but its true I am not neurotypical, am a man of only moderate sexual energy, and of good tastes. I would pick an average looking, dusky girl with smarts over a wheatish Indian any day. Also darker girls tend to be smart and independent, because of their proclivity towards introversion, which is what I prefer, as stuff lasts for a few moments but pillow talk can go on all night 😉
Sorry there is vodka in my veins so my grammAr gone for a toss. But I readlly do mean it about dusky girls, I am thinking about them right now.
Right, but the point is that light skin is still being held up as the beautiful ideal by people who live in Mumbai. India has not, in fact, come ‘ages’ ahead of the diaspora, as someone said upthread.
Hee Manju, I was going to write much the same thing.
 On Sanjaya Malakar
Sanjaya’s dark good looks has kept him in the fame because all of the tweens are in love with him. He is very nice looking! Â Okay, starting with the simple: Sanjaya is a cute, good-looking boy. Some of the other contestants are very talented but not so cute. He is thin, has golden brown skin, white teeth (usually held in a big happy smile), and beautiful lush hair. Â I love Sanjaya and would love him to win! He looks a bit like a young Donny Osmond with very brown skin. Â I think he is gorgeous (ESPECIALLY with his hair pulled back under that hat with the hat tipped forward showing his near perfect pearly whites against that luscious dark skin.. Â He was gold Tuesday with a sultry, restrained version of the classic “besame mucho,” fixing his big brown eyes on the camera as he smartly stuck to the simple vocal line. all the while the camera zoomed in on a tight shot of those big brown eyes…and all I could think of was Antonio Banderas as the Kitty in Shrek 2. Â That is such a beautiful song, and Sanjaya interpreted it PERFECTLY! I sat transfixed during his entire performance, held a willing captive by his one-of-a-kind voice and his big, gorgeous brown eyes! I Â Asian Indian descent and has more hair flopping above his incredibly dark eye brows than Barry Gibb has on his entire body.
Sing, who cares, these girls probably have the sound off while swooning over his big brown eyes and luscious locks. Â From various sources on the web.
This is hogwash. Where did you get that from? I could get books that state the opposite. I’ve read Ebony magazine plenty of times and I don’t know what you’re talking about here. Perhaps you’re unaware of how diverse Black Americans are.
Frankly this is racist/colorist. There’s no way that only lighter skin has been favored for most cultures for all of world history. Simply because nothing remains constant over time. Dark skin (or the natural complexion of that nation)was strongly valued in most cultures simply because most people are brown and civilizations are ethnocentric and like self. Therefore, civilizations’ beauty standards originally supported their natural features–at least in skin color. Only subjugation or invastion would override this which of course has happened.
Raj appears to take this light-skin stuff for granted and is projecting it for all time.
Can someone look into Saxon’s postings … all indications of trolling and flaming. I am surprised moderators have been sleeping so long.
149 · saxon 137 · saxon 96 · saxon
Correction: color has nothing to do with beauty. This is a hair’s breath away from saying that certain races are more beautiful than others. Skin color is hereditary and to say that dark-skin, or eye color, or hair texture have anything to do with beauty itself is a slippery slope. Because where do you draw the line?
Another thing, I’m tired of the people who argue that light-skin preference isn’t a big deal and of course have a right to their own opinion, equating dark-skin with obesity or shortness to prove a point. Which is they have no point. Obesity is a health concern. Being short isn’t exaclty a flaw but if one is dragging dark-skin down to being fat, stunted growth, baldness or aging just to make colorism appear less heinous or to make fatness a valid qualifier for beauty is extreme logic. There is a balance to truth folks.
As a dark-skinned person, I know I’m not alone at being offened at these comparisons. I wonder if raj is light-skinned which explains his slight indifference and insistance that light skin was always deemed superior worldwide. Or perhaps he’s dark-skinned and favors lighter women and wants to justify his “preference.” Regardless, debate is open but these comparisons are cutting it a little close.