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INDIA - IMAGES OF BEAUTY - SKIN
COLOR - MOVIE STARS - FEMALE PRESSURES
By Monika Masanam -
November 2013
Hindustan Unilever Limited’s
newest skin-lightening product as advertised on their Facebook Page
Aishwarya Rai Bachan’s
controversial digitally-lightened cover on the December 2010 issue of Elle
......India's
Bollywood as well as “Tollywood” or Telugu movies are favorites of mine, not
simply owing to my Indian heritage but because of certain aspects that
distinguish them from most Western films. The blending of genres, broad appeal
and catchy song-and-dance numbers all add to the high entertainment value and
uniqueness of Indian film. However, one underlying part of the cinema industry
in India is bothersome to me: the role of the heroine. Women in India are
generally regarded with a level of respect, but the portrayal of women in
Indian film or media is a scheme of exclusivity, frequently holding actresses
to an unnatural standard of beauty and limiting those who do not fit the
criteria.
Looking in
the mirror, I see myself as a young girl with dark brown eyes, black hair and
medium brown skin, the seemingly typical characteristics of any Indian girl my
age. Long afternoon practices for spring track and field and hours spent in the
outdoor swimming pool caused my skin to darken around my sophomore of high
school from a light tan to a dark shade of brown. While in America, I
completely overlooked this difference in skin tone. If anything, getting a good
tan was a positive change, one that indicated I was receiving a healthy dose of
sunshine. After all, many women strive to achieve similar tans by spending
hundreds of dollars on artificial methods such as cosmetic products and tanning
beds.
My trip to
India (the summer before my junior year of high school) altered my perception
of dark skin forever. When my family and I arrived at the Rajiv Gandhi
International Airport in Hyderabad, my grandparents and relatives were all
there to greet us after four years of being apart. My grandmother held me by my
shoulders and scrutinized my face. Instead of commenting as she usually did
about my height or how skinny I was, she said, “You got so dark!” Her face
twisted to form a grimace as she nodded at my mother disapprovingly. My mother
then proceeded to explain to her why I had become so dark as though she was
pleading guilty to a crime before a judge in court. “We need to fix that,” my
aunt remarked. By “that,” she meant my skin color; how she planned on “fixing”
it, I was about to find out.
Since my
cousins had school during the day while I was in India, I often watched
television or, unsurprisingly, movies to keep myself busy. Ever since my
grandmother pointed out my darker skin tone, I began to notice a peculiarity in
Indian movies and television that I had never noticed before. In the past, I
used to admire and ogle at the graceful moves and sweet smiles of Indian
heroines. Their fiery characters and practiced confidence was a source of
inspiration for me. When I began to notice that every single actress that
played a leading role in my favorite Indian films was oddly pale-skinned, I
suddenly felt disconnected. The heroines I saw on the big screen looked nothing
like me or any other Indian girl I knew personally.
In the
famous Hindi movie, Main Hoon Na, the hero, played by actor Shahrukh Khan,
sings to the heroine, played by Sushmita Sen, and extolls her as a “gori gori,”
which translates to “fair maiden” and is synonymous with referring to a woman
as “gorgeous” or “beautiful.” Often, song lyrics refer to the heroine as being
white as the moon, thereby praising the woman’s fairness. Indeed, the actresses
who play the role of the heroine in Indian films often have skin more pale than
that of regular Caucasian women. The quintessential Indian actress, Aishwarya
Rai not only has light skin but also has brown hair and green-blue eyes,
physical traits that are certainly not normally attributed to people of Indian
origin. During song-and-dance numbers within a movie, a light-skinned heroine
is often shown dancing up front and center while all the dancers in the
background are of a darker skin tone, making the contrast even greater and
sending a strong message of what is valued by the cinema industry.
For a long
time, I was unable to grasp the reason behind the habitual dominance of
light-skinned actresses in this modern age. It seemed as though aspects of
colonialism or overarching concepts of the caste system were still lingering,
yet to be fully expunged from Indian society. Nonetheless, the effects of this
corporal distinction between light and dark, propagated by the media, are
extensive. Nearly every Indian woman, not just those in my family, are trying
to make themselves more “fair” by utilizing everything from Fair & Lovely
creams to expensive and hazardous skin treatments. As ridiculous as it may
seem, fairness is very important to the future and status of an Indian woman
and even has an influence on whether or not she will eventually be able to
marry someone of a particular social or economic class.
Indian
families commonly use traditional beauty secrets for fairness that are passed
down from generation to generation. To my own surprise, these simple home
remedies, imparted to me by my grandmother, actually worked. Restoring the skin
to its former lighter color requires weeks of treatment and plenty of
diligence, but I learned that the transformation is in fact possible. Several
techniques include forcefully scrubbing the body with a mixture of besan, or
gram flour, lemon juice and yogurt, consuming abnormal amounts of pomegranate
seeds and massaging the skin with oil. After being pressured to attempt some of
these beauty routines, I found that my skin had indeed become lighter after a
period of just one month. Still, fair skin is not particularly conducive or
maintainable in a setting as hot and sweltering as the sunbathed streets of
South India. A single afternoon playing cricket on the rooftop terrace led the melanin
in my epidermis to kick in once more, immediately darkening my skin.
Although I
do not deny the beauty of fair-skinned women, I am not fond of the obvious
preference by Indian directors and the media to choose lighter skinned women,
ignoring the fact that most of these women are not truly representative of the
average brown-skinned Indian woman. Many actresses like the popular Katrina
Kaif, who was born to an English mother and remains a British citizen, are not
even fully Indian. As a result, Indian women are pressured to fit models that
are fundamentally unattainable. In truth, the directors and producers who pick
these actresses just cater to the tastes of the people and so the disfavor for
darker skin can be categorized as a type of social stigma. Although I wish this
color bias in film would go away, I realize that the prejudice is deeply rooted
in Indian society and the power to change must come from a more open-minded and
accepting younger generation that is unafraid to challenge the preconceived
notions in place.
Thanks to
the hard work of my grandmother and aunts, I was several shades lighter in skin
color when my family and I returned home. For weeks, I continued to obsess over
my skin color, trying to preserve my lighter skin tone. But while watching
television here in America, I found no signs of this cultural bias towards fair
skin. In its place, I saw commercials for tanning lotions advertised as healthy
moisturizers that promote a “sun-kissed” look. Faced with mixed societal
messages, I realized that I would never feel beautiful as long as I conformed
to antiquated ideals of beauty under the gaze of society. In my frustration, I
learned that feeling beautiful comes from embracing and appreciating the skin
tone that nature has given me. It is a shame that most of the pressure on young
girls to change something so fundamental to who they are, the color of their
skin, comes from within their own families. We must empower young woman to
dismiss these messages, as I did, and wear their skin with pride.