In All Fairness...

These days’ fairness skin products are so rampant in our markets that it is impossible to find a lotion that does not make you fair. Name the part of the body you wished was fairer, and BAM! You have a lotion that will exclusively take care of that. Our society accepts only fair skin as a symbol of beauty and even success, so you better make it fast!

Click on some Indian matrimonial websites and you can find atrocious ads for doctors and CA’s looking for ‘fair girls’. Basically such ads give away the message that if you are a female and have no education, or a brain or you have a loud temperament, or a criminal record, or your brother is Ajmal Kasab, or your mother is a suicide bomber, or your father is Bunty Chor that is completely acceptable as long as you have fair skin. Fair skin sells faster than fairness creams.

Naomi Campbell. Whenever one says something about her, the specification that she is black is one that is inevitable. “DESPITE being that”, she went on to become a supermodel. However when we talk about Anne Hathaway or Kate Winslet, do we explicitly specify that they are white? No. Because black skin is like a birth defect. Whenever they talk about Nandita Das, Bipasha Basu, Konkona Sen Sharma, it is specified unambiguously that DESPITE their birth defect, the dusky skin, they are STILL successful. This does not apply to other ladies, as they were successful deservedly. Well, can we not mention it and omit these STILL’s and DESPITE’s? Does not show business also belong to them by their own right?  

If you are a Malayali, you will know the reality show called ‘Midukki’ on channel Mazhavil Manorama. One of the contestants who made it to the last stage was widely criticized for her complexion. If you open her facebook page you can see people who’ve made comments like ‘Hey, I like you even though you are dark’ and so on and so forth. Nobody can stop themselves from making a comment on her complexion. People, there are other things she is famous for – she is smart, petite, creative and immensely confident on the ramp. But all we can see is her complexion and sympathize with that. When will we ever grow up? Or will we? Or do we derive some sort of pleasure from making comments like this? C’mon, this girl is proud of her complexion, ya!

Most of us Indians are often busy criticizing our own daughters and relatives and nieces and nephews on their looks and complexion by belittling them in some way or the other. In one of the interviews, Tamil actor Dhanush said how a movie critic insulted him about his complexion in the first paragraph of the latter’s review of his Bollywood debut ‘Ranjhanaa’. Dhanush also said that he had grown up fighting these comments and had taken them in his stride. This is undoubtedly the secret of his success.

Recently, an extremely fame deprived Hollywood newbie, whose name I don’t remember (or not worth remembering) called the Obamas ‘dark and ugly people’. This could have been a publicity exercise for her, but seriously if I were Michelle Obama I would have sent her to Mars. It teaches us an important lesson - even the Obamas are not spared. This, therefore, relieves the pain of millions of dark skinned people who are insulted every minute by National television channels that air fairness cream ads and promote the blasphemy that success and happiness comes only with fair skin.

Right now when I am writing this, scores of angry Americans are on their boiling points, indulging in cyber harassment over crowning Nina Davuluri of Indian descent as Miss

Nina Davuluri

America. And I saw a lot of comments linking her to 9/11. This again is a question of the skin. And we all know what happened to Oprah Winfrey at Switzerland.

These are racism incidents caught on camera and sensationalized by the media.

 Once I was at a birthday party, sitting in one corner and minding my business when a colleague’s wife came up to me and said:

 ‘Hi Anita, I met your sister when I was at Chennai”

Me: “Oh ya she told me...”

“She looks exactly like you”..

Me: Smile.

“But she is fairer than you are (with a thank God kind of expression)”

That landed on my face like a dead lizard. I mean, what am I supposed to do about that? Do I or should I care if my sister was fairer? Some women have complete darkness in their heads. 

I was not shaken by that comment. Because, I know that even the Obamas are not spared.

These attitudes will not change, as long as movies and other media continue to showcase it as it is now.  It will continue to haunt young and adolescent minds and deprive them of believing in their self-worth. The change can come. It starts from home.

Dark is beautiful. 

P.S: This article was published in the popular emagazine Tamarind Rice, and you can view it here :http://tamarindrice.in/tamarind-rice-september-13/

It came as a huge surprise, I was not expecting my article to show up in Tamarind Rice, seriously ! 

If you like it, you can vote for it here: http://tamarindrice.in/vote-win ( I already did, well, obviously ;-) )