I become so disturbed when marriage ads in Indian papers specify skin color (not that I often look through marriage ads :). Several dating sites do it to. If I catch one of my parents make a comment about fair skin being desirable in a mate I chastise them vociferously. There are very few things that make my blood boil as much as this issue. All the more so because I know that despite my best intentions, society has shaped my thoughts in the same way. Asians in Media reports on the obvious bias on Asian fashion magazine covers.
It’s an open secret that the majority of Asian parents have a bias towards fairer skin. Is the same true for Asian fashion magazines in Britain?
Aside from the horror stories of girls applying dangerous chemicals to their skins, the image of a beautiful Asian girl as fair with coloured contact lenses and dark brown hair is constantly thrown at us. Surely Asian fashion publications are partly to blame for this?
AiM asked two writers who have been in the industry for years, and both say the problem lies with wider culture and society, coupled with a lack of professional Asian models.
Nilpa Bharadia is former acting editor of Asian Woman/Bride magazine and recently launched the Asian Bridal Look Book with her business partner Kiren. She says the decision to use European and Brazillian models for fashion shoots is never made lightly.
“The simple fact of the matter is that if we had a choice of an agency standard Asian model, i.e 5’10” plus, and a size 8 and with beautiful features, and a white model – we would cast the Asian girl everytime,” shes says.
“It’s not that the Asian girls that used to come through the door weren’t beautiful, many were, and we made numerous exceptions on height etc. where possible. But unfortunately they were the exception to the rule.”
I’m not buying this last argument. If you stand in any supermarket line you will note that fair skin dominates regardless of the ethnicity being targeted. Do all those ethnicities lack enough model material? The editors being interviewed pointed out one Brit magazine (i-D) they claim uses “extremely black-skinned” models WHEN they hire black. I flipped through several of their mag covers and didn’t see any black models at all. Later in the article the writer presses the editors and gets to the more “logical” reasons for this bias.
“There are many people who know sisters, friends, daughters whom they believe are stunning. However modelling is a profession and not every stunning girl translates this talent onto film.” Height and beauty she says are “basic skills” of any competent model, and fashion magazines have to start with that basic requirement.
Then of course there is the touching up of pictures that goes on – sometimes making the models whiter, taller or even thinner in some cases, than they are in reality.
“Most fashion pictures are colour adjusted to make sure the detail on clothing is more striking. Modeling the world over is all about chisel chinned, toned, thin, fair-skinned girls. We don’t take ourselves so seriously that we believe we can change that,” Shihab adds.
Not all Asian fashion magazines subscribe to that view, thankfully. Some do use non-professional models with a darker-tone, specially in India. But the British Asian market and the Indian fashion industry are worlds apart. Who has the budget to pay for professional Indian models to come to Britain for a shoot?
There is also a paradox at work. We may want a darker, chocolate-coloured sister on the front cover of a fashion magazine but do then buy that product? Certainly, the more successful fashion publications such as Asian Woman, Asiana and Look Book feature mostly light-skinned models.
Could it mean us girls vote with our wallets using our eyes and not our hearts?
Yes. That’s just the way it’s going to be I guess. Alas, this is too big to fight.
beauty is going to be exclusive no matter how you define it. when you’re fighting against biology in addition it’s a no win game.
better hit the stairmaster, ladies 🙂
i’ve noticed at work that we get books from agencies with a variety of models from people who look like Maggie Rizer to people who look like Alek Wek. we determine first what exactly is being shot and what the art direction for the project is going to be. for example: the Chanel jewelry campaign last Fall featured thier jewelry on pale-skinned models, very close, cropped-in shots. the contrasting effect of the dark metals and light dewy skin would have been lost on a model of any other skin tone thus pale models were specifically chosen because the art direction deemed it as such.
sometimes the art direction leaves the skin color of the model negotiable but other factors come into play like “is she believable as the face of this product? will our customers believe it and buy into it? does her overall look translate to our brand message?” for example: you wouldn’t see Paris Hilton modeling for Vera Wang. her look is far too edgy/trendy for a brand that is associated with classic elegance. she doesn’t make sense as far as the Vera Wang brand is concerned.
basically it’s not a question of what we as art directors prefer. it’s more of a question of what will our customers prefer? what is right for the brand? customers have to change their tastes before marketers and publishers can appeal to those new tastes.
Blond Barbie dolls sell better.
From when they are born, people are constantly bombarded with media images of what is “beautiful.” This consciously or subconciously shapes peoples’ perception of beauty. Until the media makes an effort to publish images of darker skinned models, the light skinned standard of beauty will hold. However, it is a risk for the media to break the mold and risk losing their audience- it’s basically a “Which comes first, the chicken or the egg?” scenario.
Abhi mentions the fact that in the matrimonial market, light skin is a premium. Is there anything inherently wrong in light skin being a premium ? Height is a premium especially for men in the Desi community. How is height as a premium any less wrong than skin color as a premium ?
Time for perceptions of beauty to change and they are, it’s a generational shift. Give India some time, it’s getting there. Bipasha Basu, not so fair. Sushmita Sen, not so fair. Priyanka Chopra, not so fair.
As for the height/skin premium issue, a Pakistani friend of mine is absolutely gorgeous, very fair and gets rejected time and time again for being just over 5 feet tall. I have more success, I am 5’9 and really “not so fair”.
Al has a point here. Most people have to deal with some aspect of their appearance that they feel uneasy about about. Just as women are concerned about their weight, men are concerned about their height. Taller men generally earn more, are promoted faster, which in turn make them more attractive to women than shorter men.
Speaking of Barbie dolls, wasn’t there a more realistically-proportioned Barbie released a few years back which didn’t sell well?
Stands to reason. Can you imagine “mommy, mommy, please, please, please buy me that fat doll” ?? Didn’t think so.
Not quite true. There are some things which are perceived as attractive across all cultures: clear skin, facial symmetry and so on.
There’s a much simpler, more direct reason than eventual earnings: height creates a perception of dominance.
Taj Grocery, Brooklyn?
dear “fake” me whose crap i deleted,
newsflash: i know how to use a fucking adverb. do remember that the next time you attempt to impersonate me. badly. just b/c you know how to turn on “all caps” and space out your letters, that doth not an A N N A make.
also, i’ve been told “you’re so pretty for a dark girl” ever since my parents made the ill-advised move from SF to a small town 100 miles northeast of there…yawn. do you think i give a self-hating rat’s ASS about my tan? naively stereotype much? what’s next in your pathetic bag of tricks? dogging me out b/c i’m 30 and not married? mocking me b/c i’m south indian? why don’t you diss me for being christian while you’re at it?
it’s really sad that you’re consumed with how dark i am. some advice: discover happiness. you might start by finding something productive to do with your time, not wasting ours.
a few years ago, W magazine wanted to do something “original” and planned to release its December issue with a spread full of only Indian/Indian American women/models. they recruited at nyu and somehow I was selected to be one of them, but alas, my finals schedule did not allow for me to be present at the photo shoot. i found out later that they rejected all the other girls who “tried out” b/c they were “too indian.” (i’m not sure what that says about me). out of disgust, i refused to buy the issue, but i remember seeing the spread and it was full of light-skinned desi models.
Tall, Dark & Female, u wrote “Give India some time, it’s getting there. Bipasha Basu, not so fair. Sushmita Sen, not so fair. Priyanka Chopra, not so fair.” How do you not notice that in almost every movie and poster these actresses appear in, their makeup is done to make them appear lighter, and not just marginally so – sometimes to the point that they look like they’re in kabuki? Their skin color on film doesn’t remotely resemble their natural color.
Flash Gordan: yes exactly! My dad helped put on an Indian concert in CA ; Aishwarya Rai was there and she is MUCH darker in person. Her trademark blue eyes are colored contacts and her hair in its natural state is frizzier than most Afros. Rani is quite dark in person too (still pretty though).
I find it sad that the “fair is beautiful” image they are perpetuating does not even apply to them b/c they are actually dark themselves. Way to poison young girls w/ unrealistic images.
I can’t wait until genetic engineering renders this whole debate moot. I’d prefer to be the only one with black hair and a brown complexion laughing at the world of fair blondes. The laughing might come from inside a mental asylum, but laughing it nonetheless will be!
Vinod has stories about being the only brown person at the bar during trips to Iceland. They usually involve being treated like a piece of meat. He didn’t sound like he was complaining.
ANNA, You said ” also, i’ve been told “you’re so pretty for a dark girl” ever since my parents made the ill-advised move from SF to a small town 100 miles northeast of there” I am presuming that the people who say this are Non Desis. I find that really interesting. It has been my personal experience that non desis are way more willing to look past color than desis when it comes to differences in colors within desis. I think the reason is that for white americans the difference between skin tones of brown people are too slight to notice. To an average American a brown person is just that, a brown person. Desis obsess over light brown, medium brown, dark brown, brownish etc., To the white Americans we are all the same in skin tone that is brown. That is why I am surprised by your comment. I would have thought that Americans would be more appreciative of your good looks than an average desi. Halle Berry is considered gorgeous in the US ( and she is) while in a country like India, Halle Berry would not get a role in a Hindi movie. Of course even in the US there is a preference for lighter skinned black women, but I think the Americans are way more willing to designate a desi dark girl as pretty than the desis.
So I am surprised that a pretty girl like you has to put up with this nonsense of skin color.
Manish, are you making a serious argument that, on race, media regurgitation of images and values created by colonialism, our wonderful worlwide legacy of racism, etc., has nothing to do with how we perceive beauty (among other things)? Maybe I’m misunderstanding you.
Agreed, it’s more than just that and, to understate, I’m oversimplifying a bit, but I can’t imagine how White racists having control of information for a few hundred years could escape having an influence today.
Al Mujahid:
I can’t speak for A N N A, but as a girl of East Asian heritage growing up in Idaho, there weren’t distinctions between colors, only white and non-white, white and dark. People were just ignorant of the different shades: along with “chink” and “wang-ching-chong”, I’ve also been referred to as “that black chick”, “nigger”, and “Mexican”. It’s an aspect of living in a homogenous culture.
Similarly, when I lived in Ghana, it was either black or white, and having been the “other” my entire life, it was a surprise to finally be called “white” (having been called everything but), although by this time I was proud enough of my color to be a little miffed aside from my amusement.
Scientific studies on beauties abound.
I’ll be the first to say European notions of beauty inform perceptions of beauty in India and in the US. There is a bit more tho…One has to give props where props are due. Aishwarya, Rani, Bipasha…they are all symmetrical as hell!
This crap irritates me to. The comment about sushmita,priyanka,bipasha etc representing the dark skin tones in india is absurd. They have ligher skin color compared to average indian color. They are ligher than Ms Nagra(whose complexion is the average indian complexion) They appear darker than the average bollywood type actress. Indian movies do manipulate the color on screen. This is a more recent trend. I’ve met Shahrukh Khan twice and he is dark. Brownish color. Watch him in Mohabbatein…They really went overboard on this one where they screwed up the color of his skin…almost making him appear like michael jackson like color. There are plenty of indians who are dark as Ebony. Where do u see them in Movies ? there are indians who look like Asians(all color specturm is present there also whith the light chinese like skin color to dark cambodian like color too.) where are they represented in movies?
Al Mujahid…
i really wrestled with including the following piece of information in the comment you responded to…in the end, i deleted it before posting, though your surprise at my past experiences makes me realise that maybe my fear of upsetting people should come second to being absolutely clear–
the people who said “you’re so pretty for a dark girl” were ALL north indian, 99% punjabi. my parents moved to a place that was between hwy 99 and I-5. between that factor and my father choosing the most agriculture-friendly UC for me to attend college at, I’ve always been surrounded by Punjabis (or the occasional Gujurati).
older white people (mom’s colleagues, for ex) charitably thought i was “exotic” while my aryan-nosed sister was “beautiful”. 🙂 you can’t compliment one kid and not the other. 😉 as for younger white people, they gave me no play (while they chased my sister frantically). 😀
i think i look really indian/malayalee (someone said i didn’t look mallu and i’m dying to know why, out of overwhelming curiousity) and “indian” isn’t really what white OR indian models and actresses look like, so no, until i started the soft-porn hobby that is my fotolog, i can’t say that i got much positive attention. 😉 halle berry has a cute white-girl nose and a great rack, so i’m not surprised she gets so much love. no one loves “a desi dark girl” except black guys and white/desi guys with a fetish for wheatish.
blunt and outrageous but true in my three decades of experience. sigh. let the flame war begin.
ANNA
It doesnt surprise me that you got all those crass comments from Punjabis because light skin colour is fetishised in Punjabi culture….you just have to listen to some of the bhangra songs and folk songs to hear odes to girls who are so ‘chitee~chitee gori~gori’
I’m struggling to get a hold on where this attitude comes from. But I can only speculate. It’s incredibly dumb. But I do think it is a complex that happens across other desi people too, and even amongst some black people.
Anyway, the funny thing is how white people want to get brown like us, and spend hundreds of pounds sizzling under a sun bed to get tanned and look brown and beautiful.
I don’t think the gori/gora rang thing in Punjab comes from any one place. I also don’t think its a simple case of not liking their own skin color. The “gora” color in the Punjabi songs isn’t the same color as a person from Northern Europe would have
I hate to break the news, but skin tone is also an issue among African-Americans. It is also an issue in Latin America, where “aspecto agradable” is a euphemism for light skin and European features, rather than African or Native American. We’ve all got some work to do.
ANNA, I am wondering whether your sister is light skinned. It has been my personal experience that Desis are more into light skin than caucazoid features. Whites are more into caucazoid features than light skin. For example Halle Berry with her caucaozoid features is considered hot by the whites, while I am pretty sure that any light skin woman in the Desi marriage market will carry a higher premium than a Hally Berry like dark skinned woman inspite of her caucazoid features. I have an extremely gorgeous cousin who is dark (actually not even that dark, but Desi Muslims tend to be more color obsessed….thats a different topic anyway) My point was that my dark skinned cousin is not considered pretty by the desi community while shes considered very pretty by the non desi community as she has caucazoid features ( not suggesting that the reason behind her being pretty are her caucazoid features) The reason that I expressed surprise was because of my above held belief that white people are more into features than color. But the fact that most people saying that were Indians, makes perfect sense.
…and similarly height is considered a disadvantage for women, at some point. Take it from me, I had to hear “We’re going to have to put a brick on your head to stop you from growing – otherwise, how are we going to find a nice Indian boy for you?” from every. member. of. my. huge. extended. family. starting at age 12 (when I was 5’6).
-D
The prefrence for fairness in women exists in a lot of cultures
Examples – European disporea and their prefrence blonde hair explaines why so many dark haired women dye their hair blond.
East Asians are really into the fairness thing as well, paler skinned women are considered more attractive.
See Spike Lee’s ‘school daze’ to see the extent of the fair skin bias that exists for black girls.
Hispanics exhibit this preference as well, if you have ever seen a Mexican soap opera you know what I am talking about.
However I think how you define fairness is relative to the local population.
Example: The Olive-skin tone maybe considered fair to Desis but is dark by European and North East Asian standards.
With globalization as the local population becomes highly diverse, it will be interesting to see how the standards of beauty evolve.
I’m struggling to get a hold on where this attitude comes from. But I can only speculate. It’s incredibly dumb. But I do think it is a complex that happens across other desi people too, and even amongst some black people.
a few points
there is a fair amount of evidence that lighter than average coloration is a marker for fertility in females.
to elaborate, elevated basal levels of testosterone relative to estrogen tend to correlate with melanin production. men get darker at puberty, women often get lighter. as women age, and especially at menopause, their estrogen level drops and their testosterone increases, and the complexion of their unexposed skin tends to get darker.
so, within any given population ligher than average complexion is a good cue for ‘fertility.’ 1) women are lightest during their peak fertility years, 2) women who are light tend to have lower levels of testosterone and higher levels of estrogen and more likely to conceive.
i did emphasize the fact that this is a statistical tendency within populations didn’t i? the important point is that white women are not more fertile than black women because they are lighter, because their estrogen and testosterone levels aren’t that different, the lighter complexion among whites vs. blacks is a function of differences in genes that control for color. but within a population a fair amount of the variation of color is mediated by hormones. in other words, the “sweet spot” for color might actually differ by group, ergo, south asians prefer a “honey fair” rather than a “snow white,” etc.
these are all tendencies mediated by cultural preferences. no absolutes.
also, the neolithic revolution and social stratification changed things. in japan an empirical study does suggest that the aristocracy is ligher skinned than the typical japanese. geneological studies going back centuries suggest a pattern: extremely “beautiful” girls often married into the aristocracy. in japanese society beauty in females and pale complexion were synonomous. the suggestion here is that cultural preference for light skin resulted in selection for light skin among those who could be choosiest (high status males). whereas in 1600 the japanese aristocracy was lighter because they didn’t work in the fields, in 1900 after 3 centuries of tokugawa stability (so there wasn’t that much class churn) the aristocracy was lighter skinned because of the influx of women who could use their fairness as currency in the marriage market.
the common skin color terms in south asia were popularized during the mughal period. the ashraf (foreign) muslims used them to distinguish between themselves (‘white’ muslims) and the convert population (‘black’ muslims), which would btw have included punjabi muslims 🙂
there is widespread evidence that preference toward light skin predates european cultural hegemony in asia and the new world. i get a bit tired over all this ‘white people are imposing their beauty standards on us,’ since the most color preoccupied people are generally FOB. this can be contrasted with the vogue for brown hair in japan (japanese with brown air, likely from ainu ancestry, used to dye their locks black) today as opposed to the traditional idea in east asia that light-haired or eyed people were ugly trolls or witches. the persian canon of field beauty was i believe white skin, black hair, round face and dark eyes. basically, tall, thin and blonde is a social construction to some extent, but fair is not.
there are some weird things that happen though when you have immigrant populations. as brown people in the USA i think we are all less color conscious than our parents because we live in a society where we are generic brown, and no one would say any of us were ‘light’ (perhaps dusky?). so you have actresses like parminder nagra or sarita choudhury who are too dark for bollywood, but can make it in the western media market.
i think genetic engineering will change things a lot in the future.
re: iceland, i have found that that effect is operative often, but there are differences between males and females. dark skin in males as far as an aversion goes is probably all due to social construction, high testosterone males within a given group tend to be dark skinned (‘tall dark and handsome’) while fair males tend to be closer to a ‘paedeomorphic’ or ‘feminine’ state.
…and similarly height is considered a disadvantage for women, at some point. Take it from me, I had to hear “We’re going to have to put a brick on your head to stop you from growing – otherwise, how are we going to find a nice Indian boy for you?” from every. member. of. my. huge. extended. family. starting at age 12 (when I was 5’6).
in the 1950s girls who were too tall were prescribed drugs to stunt their development. basically, ‘too tall’ meant anything over 5’6.
there is also some evidence that shorter women and taller men are more fertile. this of course results in a balancing between the traits as their kids will span the spectrum and recapitulate the tendency.
Al M-
I also think that there is a premium on Caucasian features. When browsing through matrimonial ads, many of them ask for a fair girl with sharp features- sharp meaning Aryan/Middle Eastern looking.
I think Indians’ definition of “white” looking is more Mediterranean/Middle Eastern than north European, since N. Europeans don’t usually have sharp noses or other features. I have frequently heard my mom complimenting desi people (men and women) for their “Italian look”.
However, I think fairness is still more important to desis, since no one will compliment a dark-skinned desi with Caucasian features for having Caucasian features. One must be light-skinned and Caucasian looking to be considered “fair with sharp features.”
razib
Cheers for that long and interesting and speculative post.
no, she is not.
:+:
razib’s post is mad interesting. it potentially explains how my mother went from way fair to…irra-ntherum (terrible malayalam spelling). hmmm. i’m not fair and i’m not short. i’m also 30. guess i’m adopting. 😉
btw anna, my gf, who happens to be blonde read’s sepia now and then and she thinks you are hot. just so you know.
Don’t forget Kajol– definitely not “gauri” complexion.
(Sorry, was out of country for a few days, so I’m slow on the post)
Its interesting that men don’t get typecast in quite the same way. Milind Soman, Rahul Bose, Ajay Devgan – all dark skinned but pretty darned successful in their own genres.
That’s because dark skin is considered masculine. You should be citing Saif Ali Khan and such.
Yeah, funny how you always see dark desi guys w/ light desi girls, but never the opposite.
Excuse me butting in – but I found this page completely by chance via Google and thought I could contribute a little to what’s being said…
Well, I’m of Celtic extraction – the most noticeable thing this gives me at first glance (apart from my skin colour) is grey-green eyes. A couple of years ago I worked in Mahrashta, and it did take a little while to get used to the looks I’d get in restaurants and shops. So it’s not just a one way thing of Indians getting attention in the “whiter” parts of Europe!
Although this wasn’t something I experienced in India!
Not me – I burn far too easily (again, my “Celticness”). Although, given our recent ways of treating people of colour, I do agree that it is strange that in most western countries dark skin on people of European descent is seen to be a good thing and was seen to be a good thing even during culturally conservative periods. Why do I say “our recent ways”? Because if you go back in history you’ll find that in the times of the Roman Empire Europe was actually fairly well integrated, case in point: Emperor Septimius Severus.
My final thoughts on the whole appearance “thing”, there is more to beauty than skin tone, eye colour, body type or height. Everyone has their own preferences, some of which may have been culturally reinforced, but if everyone only dated supermodels there wouldn’t be 6 billion of us wandering about the planet, would there?
I’ll butt back out now!
personally i think “darker desi girls” are really preety..from a guy’s point of view. Im south ndn, and im a bit darker (but not that much) myself, specially my arms from being out in the sun..im sometimes concious of my skin too, but i shouldn’t be, lol. My roomates (they are both guju) sometimes make funny of me cause i have darker skin and from teh fact that im from the south, but i dun care, lol.I dunno, it seems girls have the stereotype too; they go for lighter skinned guys rather than darked skinned..like guys do too..at least ive noticied here in southern california. But u know, if u go 2 india, everyone is preety brown…it only seems that they are light i guess in movies and tv, cause they play with the makeup and lighting, like people have said earlier..and also among disaporic indians i guess. Im actually one guy that feels kinda wierd with shorter women, i hate looking down to em when i have to talk, i’d rather have them be nearer to my eye level.
hi, my name is rich and, i’m asian. i’ve been rejected by a blonde that looks similar to jessica simpson simply because she is afraid of what the others might think how an asian guy might look going out with a hot blonde. there are plenty of girls for me to choose from, but i’m trying to set an example that this asian guy can handle this hot blonde babe. i’ve been working hard, but it is not as easy as u think. How often do u see an asian guy with a hot blonde girlfriend. its always the other way around….
Anonymous coward and flaming hotness are you proud of yourselves? You have almost destroyed an amazing website that many of us cherished. How dare you judge slander and insult Anna. What is wrong with you people? She shares her life and thoughts with us generously and you mistreat her? And then you have the indecentcy to say she deserved it? Shame on you!
And you, Sepia bloggers? Does it take a red thread and a symbolic transaction of valuables once a year for you to care about what happens to your only sister? Shame on you for not acting immediately for letting people think they could insult the only woman here. I heard she might be leaving. No one could blame her. Half of me hopes she is replaced with another female but half of me doesn’t want that either. Why should any woman willingly take such treatment?
What is being done? As a reader who has followed you for over six months, I am concerned about the tone of this website of late. You put up a FAQ link because someone asked. Well, Im asking for this. For accountability. Your comment section states that abusive comments will be deleted unless they are funny. Did you think that the way people were talking to Anna was funny? Is it all good than?