Looking to find a husband, make friends, and get ahead at work? Then you need to have lighter skin. That is the all-pervasive message in India, and it is something that one actress is fighting to overturn.
The new poster girl of the “Dark is Beautiful” campaign, Nandita Das, has called out India’s obsession with fair skin — a prejudice she says has driven some young women to the brink of suicide.
“Magazines, TV, cinema — everywhere being fair is synonymous with being beautiful,” Das said.
Described as having “dusky” skin as opposed to a fair complexion, the 43-year-old is well used to Indian preoccupations with color, and not just in the film industry, where she has refused requests to lighten her skin for roles.
“How can you be so confident despite being so dark?” is a question regularly asked of Das, who has preferred to star in unconventional, issue-based films, but says she would struggle to get ahead in mainstream Bollywood movies.
In May, Das became the face of the Dark is Beautiful campaign, launched in 2009 by activist group Women of Worth to celebrate “beauty beyond color.”
Her backing has helped to generate increasing debate in the media, but the response has underlined just how ingrained the preference is for fairer skin, which has long been associated with higher social classes and castes.
“I started getting tonnes of e-mails from young women pouring their heart out about how they were discriminated against. Some wanted to commit suicide because they couldn’t be fair,” she said.
Das found her own photograph had been lightened by a newspaper even for a feature on the campaign. When looking for a nanny, she was told one candidate was “good, but quite dark.”
Amid such pressures to be pale, India’s whitening cream market swelled from US$397 million in 2008 to US$638 million over four years, according to market researchers at Euromonitor International.
Skin-lightening products accounted for 84 percent of the country’s facial moisturizer market last year, their report shows.
The bias facing darker-skinned women was raised again last month when an Indian-origin woman, Nina Davuluri, won the “Miss America” contest in the US.
“Had she been in India, far from entering a beauty contest, it is more likely that Ms Davuluri would have grown up hearing mostly disparaging remarks about the color of her skin,” said an editorial in the Hindu newspaper.
“She would have been — going by the storyline of most ‘fairness’ cream advertisements — a person with low self-esteem and few friends,” it said.
Last year, a commercial for an “intimate wash” to whiten vaginas emerged, showing a young Indian woman who uses the product to successfully regain her boyfriend’s attention.
The advert was widely panned, but a glance through matrimonial Web sites and newspaper columns suggests that fair skin, at least on a woman’s face, remains key to attaining an Indian husband.
Aspiring grooms often state in their adverts their preference for a fair bride, while nearly all women’s profiles describe their complexion as fair or so-called “wheatish.”
Ekta Ghosh, a fashion designer in Mumbai who specializes in wedding wear, said the message that only fair is beautiful had been passed down to Indian girls for generations.
“Parents, relatives, they all keep saying you should do something to lighten your skin tone,” she said.
India’s mass market whitening pioneer was “Fair & Lovely,” launched in 1975 by Hindustan Unilever.
Indian consumer group Emami later came up with “Fair and Teen” for girls and “Fair and Handsome” for men.
Promoted by Bollywood superstar Shah Rukh Khan, the latest advert shows him tossing a tube of the cream from the red carpet to a young male fan.
Dark is Beautiful has launched a petition against the “irresponsible” video and its message that “fair skin is a prerequisite for success.”
So far more than 15,000 people have signed up in protest, but Khan has not responded.
Das believes whitening cream developers did not create Indians’ color bias and insecurities, but have “cashed in” on it, creating a “vicious circle.”
While men’s fairness products are gaining ground, the actress says women and girls still face far more pressure over their skin tone.
“Until we let women have the same space as men and treat them as human beings, all this will carry on,” Das said.
‘IN A DIFFERENT PLACE’: The envoy first visited Shanghai, where he attended a Chinese basketball playoff match, and is to meet top officials in Beijing tomorrow US Secretary of State Antony Blinken yesterday arrived in China on his second visit in a year as the US ramps up pressure on its rival over its support for Russia while also seeking to manage tensions with Beijing. The US diplomat tomorrow is to meet China’s top brass in Beijing, where he is also expected to plead for restraint as Taiwan inaugurates president-elect William Lai (賴清德), and to raise US concerns on Chinese trade practices. However, Blinken is also seeking to stabilize ties, with tensions between the world’s two largest economies easing since his previous visit in June last year. At the
Nearly half of China’s major cities are suffering “moderate to severe” levels of subsidence, putting millions of people at risk of flooding, especially as sea levels rise, according to a study of nationwide satellite data released yesterday. The authors of the paper, published by the journal Science, found that 45 percent of China’s urban land was sinking faster than 3mm per year, with 16 percent at more than 10mm per year, driven not only by declining water tables, but also the sheer weight of the built environment. With China’s urban population already in excess of 900 million people, “even a small portion
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese