Our True Colours : outlookindia.com

Our True Colours : outlookindia.com: "Our True Colours




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'There is a certain dominance of north Indian aesthetics,' says Delhi-based sociologist Patricia Uberoi, 'where feminine beauty values a fair skin contrasted with dark hair and combined with soft features and big eyes. This goes with the global aspect where Indians are being exposed to international television that celebrates East Asian beauty with fair skin and dark hair.'

For fairness’s sake: A dark-skinned person getting a facial
However, while the South may decry this attitude of the northerners, it is as guilty of placing a huge premium on fairness.



Intermarriage was extremely rare between Indians and Africans in apartheid SA.


Tamil cinema, in fact, is known for reinforcing the stigma against dark skin. Superhero Rajnikanth himself may be dark, but fair women all the way from Rajasthan are imported to star in Tamil films.

Indian advertising too for


long has courted fairness. You will never find a dark woman or man selling you a cosmetic brand in the Indian media. Or for that matter anything. After all, who can look better than a John Abraham peddling Garnier's new fairness cream? And in case you were beginning to forget the importance of fairness, Vogue India reminded us of it blatantly with its inaugural cover in October 2007. It flashed pale Australian model Gemma Ward as its centrepiece with the relatively darker Indian beauties Bipasha Basu and Priyanka Chopra as her sidekicks.

Matrimonial ads, week after week, hammer this in unfailingly: dark is ugly, fair is lovely. The dark can sit on the marriage shelf, there is demand only for the fair or very fair. And it is not u"