There seems to be a strong nationalistic sentiment amongst many of you, often accompanied by a fear that India is being subsumed by Western culture. Slumdog Millionaire, some insist, won international accolades only because it was a movie made by a Western director, from a white man’s perspective. The Pink Chaddi movement is a symbol of the contamination of Indian culture by Western modernization. Perhaps there is some truth to these claims, but if so then we have only ourselves to blame. We are the ones who continue to worship white skin.
I grew up in a small town in Oklahoma, at a time when racism was still openly expressed in the “heartland” of the United States. From preschool through high school, I was the victim of racial persecution in varying degrees, and from many sources (teachers, coaches, dance instructors, white kids, black kids, and even red kids). I was brown and nerdy, and the oldest daughter of a relatively wealthy, conservative, immigrant household, giving almost any native of this barren Bible Belt town plenty of fodder for derision. But as I began to establish my identity in the community, I felt most of the explicit racism slowly melt away. The white people began to accept me, and even respect me for my differences. By the end of high school, I was considered beautiful by many of my peers, and I was even nominated as a Football Homecoming candidate my senior year (this is essentially a school-sanctioned popularity contest; the other two candidates were white girls, and a white girl won). That year, I was also voted “Most Likely to Succeed” and “Prettiest Smile” by my classmates. I had crossed racial barriers and proven my worth as a brown girl in the white man’s world.
Since high school, I have felt quite comfortable assimilating into white communities and have made friends of all skin tones with whom I share a very natural, unprejudiced kinship. Yet there are certain times when I still feel that my beauty is under-appreciated because of my dark skin — when I am around Indians. I am always a bit taken aback when I see a commercial for Fair and Lovely, or when an auntie advises me to avoid the sun. As the rest of the world chases the exotic beauty of dark skin, Indians continue to treat fair skin as the epitome of female beauty. Why?
This obsession with light skin is a relic from a time when light skin meant that you were wealthy, because you didn’t have to work outside all day in the sun. And I’m sure this bias was reinforced by the British occupation. The relationship between light skin and wealth continues to be unnaturally propagated in India today, because rich people still prefer to marry light. And so this baseless obsession feeds on itself. But this archaic distinction makes no sense in the modern economy, where a nice tan is likely to suggest that you have the leisure to go on beach vacations rather than wasting away all day in a cubicle under glaring fluorescent lights. I think it’s preposterous, and somewhat scary, that we are still brainwashed by these backwards notions of beauty.
Dark skin is beautiful. I hope we can start to see our own beauty, because we will never ascend to greatness until we embrace ourselves.
Hi Prerna,
Beauty is not just about skin color and looks. Its more about the internal person one is. That’s important. If one is clean inside and feels beautiful it shows
Kiran