A young ambitious woman walks into an interview and gets rejected. A fair maiden, usually a well known star, skin gleaming like it runs on electricity, hands her a tube of what is advertised to be a boon for her misfortune ridden life.
In a week, said woman walks back into the same office, everyone is blown away by her fair skin, a sense of achievement which apparently even her resume couldn't give her, and she lands the job. Sounds familiar? Does it anger you as much as it should, however?
We as Indians grew up normalizing the horror that these very common and very prevalent advertisements are. We have been taught that a woman's looks weigh more than her resume. That having unflattering looks is a misfortune you need a miracle to get rid of. That women are objects to stare at in awe at a workplace. And above all of these, that dark complexion is the root cause of one's misfortune. And although it isn't as focused on and prioritized for men, attempts are still made to suck them into this mindset too.
The motive here is not to shun fair skin and glorify dark skin, but to ask the question nobody wants to hear; Just how thick of a bubble do we have to live in to not see that one's complexion is simply the color of their skin, completely out of their control and completely irrelevant in most if not all aspects of life? These ideas have been drilled into our minds so deep that it actually does reflect on real life in many deep impacting ways. Complexion is relevant in India in the worst ways possible.
Finding a groom for women of darker skin is talked about as if it is a nightmare, people addressing their complexion with sympathetic undertones. It is not uncommon to find well accomplished women settling for men that aren't ideal for them because they are dark skinned. People bleach their skin with creams and serums that promise to make their skin '7 shades lighter' in a week, with fairness associated with words like 'lovely', 'handsome' and 'pure'. It is not uncommon to find people spending a fortune on 'treatments', almost as if darkness is something one needs to 'treat'. It is a normalised phenomenon in our country, and people do not talk about it. In the changing world of makeup, where lack of diversification in color ranges in countries that have predominantly pale skinned people faces criticism, India, the country that needs it the most still seems to need a few more decades to even acknowledge dark skinned people. It is almost as if the makeup industry and the beauty business of India fears diverse complexion. And they managed to get away with pretending India doesn't have dark skinned people and fairness is a standard to be reached. And they're still doing it, ears shut, eyes closed and shaking their heads sideways, refusing to even consider the needs of darker skinned people.
The ideology that in a country like India, arguably with the most diverse native population, everyone should strive to be as pale as possible, is utterly ridiculous and completely devoid of logic to say the least. It is but simply a result of decades of psychological conditioning. Complexion is not a factor, color discrimination is. And yet we continue to live as if it doesn't matter, though we know and bear witness to the fact that the psychological impact it has on the young and old, women and men alike is not only noticeable, but also intense and life changing. How much longer before it ends? Will it ever?
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