Colonised Colouring

There's been a lot of brouhaha about dark skin in the media for the past month or so, including many daring desis and a swashbuckling stylebehen. If you've been in Mumbai and commuting, you've certainly seen the hoardings, both of Fair and Handsome and Saat Phere, the new soap to hit Zee TV. What both these have in common is the theme of dark skin *rolls eyes*

SERIOUSLY PEOPLE, GET A LIFE! Why this hangup with fair skin? I know it's this colonial hangover we have as Indians, possibly as coloured people worldwide because of the near total world domination by the Western Europeans, but its OVER! Like over half a century ago for most people for heaven's sake! We've been liberated from the physical bondage but not the ideological! Why! I know its hard to separate the many seemingly superficial and innocuous aspects of Westernization like junk food, jeans (though seriously, suits in our terrible Indian summers?) and gadgets to make our daily living easier (though I'm sure many elders long for a slower lifestyle in which there was plenty of menial labour to do the things that washing machines and mixers purport to accomplish better. There still is, but we're all less patient now!). of course, when we absorb anything from a culture, we're usually also absorbing the idea behind it. Often it's the wrong idea, or we forget the traditions we originally had for that issue, which could have been more suitable for the overall cultural mindset.

This is the point where I always get confused. I am completely for equal rights to all living creatures, something every culture teaches in theory but rarely follows. After my initial bouts of etnocentrism living abroad, romanticising Indian culture, I also realised that Western culture is surviving, if not flourishing, for a reason. Then I was at peace when I came to the conclusion - to each their own. We all reside in our own cultural and individual subjectivities, and I like my queer amalgamation of the two cultures, that unfortunately few others in my acquaintance contain in quite the same mixture. For instance, I am progressive about women's rights in the relative manner that the West is, and while I don't recommend that a woman's place is in the home and she cook and clean like a doormate for a family, that for the most part, functions like grunting ingrates, I do believe that it's important for both men and women to know about their history, their mythology, their traditions and why they are followed, figure out a healthy balance for themselves regarding what to internalise and what to discard, and hopefully find someone who thinks like them for a happy life.

One thing that we coloured people have internalised, are Western conceptualisations of beauty. I remember being showed by my dear Erosopher Patty in a book (was it The Beauty Myth or another one?), and being shocked at, the elaborate racial essentialist imperialistic structure the British had constructed for themselves, right down to categorising racial superiority on the basis of skull shape and features! Of course, the white male was at the very zenith of racial evolution (NOW it is believed that they are albinos, HA! - I must research that theory), and the black male at the bottom, closest to the ape in facial skeletal structure. (The Indian skull chosen - which had a Shivaji/Mughal type of profile, with hooked nose etc., was in the middle, but closer to the bottom. I was understandably affronted!) Even the Chinese go crazy for the relatively white Japanese skin and skinny bone structure and larger eyes and higher cheekbones! Just as the black models we see today, Naomi Campbell, Tyra Banks, all have high foreheads, large almond eyes, high cheekbones, relatively sharp noses and full lips, not to mention looong legs (I remember reading a book by Anthony Trollope which stated that some random parson's wife would have been pretty if her lips hadn't been full - pooh!)

India has been invaded first by the Aryans, then Greeks, then Islamic peoples and all those myriad combinations of Central Asian tribes, besides the Mughals (originally from Mongolia I believe, whose empire spread as far as Persia in the West), then finally the British. So it's all generally been tall, fair, slim people with sharp features, as compared to our dark, shorter Harappan and Dakshin people who I distinctly remember being described in my history textbook as having 'pendulous' features, a word i love the sound of and associate with traditional Bengali beauties - don't ask why - guess its the undulating gentless of their moist features.

But that is a tangent. India, which has the capacity to show incredible secularism under many strenuous situations in all aspects of its attitude, from giving shelter to refugee Tibetans, Banglas etc, to religious, traditional and linguistic and sartorial diversity, to food tolerance, seems to be... regressing? - in it's attitude towards skin tone, taking a disappointingly unidirectional route towards conforming to a notion of superiority that has only been made implicit through the tacit compliance of its people. Dammit! How can skin tone itself make anyone superior? India is a land that comprises all the racial types possible - from Sino-Tibetan to Negroid, to even Austroloid (yeah way after Australia separated our from our Gondwanaland in evolutionary geography) (sounds like Android na - yeah, that's all we're reducing races to, taxonomised automatons. Wonder if they have a Euroid. If not, note how they have categorised us as the 'other' to their self. Note that I am as conditioned by their vocabulary as I am doing the same! Well, one needs to learn the language of the ruler to protest). And that is only for the tribed who are endogamous. That amounts to an incredible range of skin tones, features, and fabulous opportunities for genetic mixing. I wonder what I'm a mix of! (As a morbid exercise, go to this website to find out what race you look like and what you are likely to earn depending on your features. BLATANT... I'm speechless!)

What are we aping the West and their pseudoscientific 'findings' for? I know that a lot of cultures believe that the bigger the forehead, the more intelligent one is, and all that nonsense. That way anything can be derived from anything! We have internalised just that - a notion not based on anything other than a deep-seated prejudice and a penis complex. And these people were smart enough to channel their complex in such a way to construct an elaborate mythology about it. And we are STILL suffering its consequences! This desire to be light-skinned is unrealistic and stupid! All of Bollywood is North Indian and influenced by the Aryan features of the Punjabis ruling the roost. Even the South Indians they picked were fair, excepting Rekha, Jaya Bhaduri and Sridevi, who looked like our anthropomorphised goddess idols or were suitably sultry. Still, our light skinned heroines rarely tend to have the beguiling look that nature has bestowed on dark-skinned women to seemingly apologise for the way the world woudl treat them - big eyes and pouting lips on heart shaped faces. The point is, everyone is made perfect the way he/she is.

Fairness creams don't significantly change one's skin tone. I think it probably functions more like a placebo because one would tend to be more conscious of one's appearance and proportionately take greater care of oneself. I remember the first page of Bharati Mukherjee's Wife in which she wrote about how the protagonist's mother rubbed all sorts of tonics and milk and almond thinsg on her and had to resort to having her picture taken in soft focus in order to make her appear lighter, so that she would not be rejected outright by prospective husbands - superficial fools! These men tend to be ugly irrespective of skin tone and yet they demand a 'fair' (equated with beautiful - wife?) Yes beta, its for the good of the succeeding generations. Drown in your ugly mindset, DESPOS! I remember my sister being ignored as women fawned over how pretty I was at every wedding function. I was plump, chubby and chirpy, the First Child of the family in every way. My sister, today, is far prettier and more glamourous. I remember her scrubbing multani mitti on herself daily and rubbing pumice stone and God knows what other nonsense, and me being not allowed to drink tea by my maid for fear that I'd get dark. At some point, when we weren't looking, she blossomed into this delicate sultry girl with long silky black hair, doe-like knowing eyes and full lips. She'd experiment with makeup for hours in front of the mirror and take oodles of care about her looks. She had so many admirers in college its not funny. I on the other hand, having taken for granted that I was pretty by default because of my skin tone, can still not be bothered about what I wear or how I look. My eye pencil still falters and smudges, and I don't have the slightest notion of how to apply blush or shadow.

I remember feeling terrible for her. I remember vociferously defending her right to be pretty, arguing that certain features suited certain skintones perfectly as nature ordained them. I'm offended I had to defend her. I'm offended that many elders in India, when describing someone as bad looking, usually follow it up by a comment on his/her (usually dark) skin tone. Like it matters! Whatever happened to Tall, Dark and Handsome? Though many would say that that myth probably had too do with the sexualisation of the black man by white women (Covered in the sepia mutiny link above)

Of course, India and assorted companies had to be assaulted with skin-lightening creams. Somehow, I couldn't help noticing that most of these women were merely messy tomboys who looked like they didn't wash often enough, who bloomed as pinky white females only after using the cream and donning suitably pink salwars. The advertising tools are blatantly obvious. What's shaming is how desperate and stupid consumers are! In the last Fair and Lovely Ad about the girl who wanted to be a cricket commentator last year, the picture was black and white when she was being a tomboy. her hair was messy and she was in messy jeans without any makeup. AFTER using the cream, the picture comes in colour, she CONSPICUOUSLY has lipstick and blush and shadow on, her hair suddenly grows longer and acquires ringlets, and she wears a flowy salwar kameez! GIVE ME A BREAK! That's usually the case in all these crap ads, even the Fair and Handsome one that's being dissed above.

The guy in the Fair and Handsome ad is quite obviously South Indian (hey, I love them - look at Madhavan and Vishwanathan Anand!!! so cute!) and quite hapless looking. And he doesn't look whiter, just cleaner and more shiny, due to some backlight type effect that merely looks more soft-focus. Just like the ads featuring females. It's such crap. It's such an obvious ploy that I simply cannot understand how anyone doesn't see it (unless they're blinded by nothing other than hope!) It seems to be supporting my theory about just being aware enough to take care of oneself. Just eat good food, more fruits and vegetables and pure unprocessed foods and drink LOTS of water (1 litre for every 20 kg you weigh) and see the difference! Your skin will glow irrespective of colour and people will be attracted to you for something that seems to be emanating from UNDER your skin, not ON it! Don't hide yourself and shrink from the spotlight! Of course people won't notice you if you do that! We're all ALREADY beautiful.

(Thanks to Karishma, who noticed the blatant stereotype crossed out above that I thought I could get away with. Yes, my thinking is as flawed as that of those I criticise! Ive always been influenced by this history book notion of Aryan vs Dravidian or North vs South paradigm, which pretty much equates to fair vs dark, whether consciously or not ... which is really inexcusable because it's this covert/subconscious type of discrimination on the part of even educated people like me that is responsible for many of our society's problems - language wars between the North and South, etc. And its not a question of a particular skin tone being considered beautiful universally, its the whole that should be counted as greater than it parts! But I still wonder what that guy is! He has a very serene face. I like that :) )

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And yeah, what is up with these regressive soaps that imply that a dark girl is only fit to be worried about by her mother, and abused by her inlaws? As if its her fault! While media reflects life, it also shapes a lot of worldviews, particularly its audience of bored middle class housewives with unrealised subconscious dreams and indulgent husbands. It must realise its responsibility when it makes soaps that draw on the insecurities of women in a country that still has a pretty blatant power dynamic based on family and matrimonial alliances, besides sex. This country is rampant with female foeticides and abandonment even in posh urban areas. There is a 50% chance that each child will be born dark. This is acceptable if its a boy for various reasons such as the hope that he will be his parent's support in their old age, but an absolute no-no for a girl whose income will be absorbed by her prospective in-laws anyway, and who, with her dark skin may not even find an in-law, in which case her life and her parents' will remain incomplete, according to our antediluvian beliefs. Who would want to invest in such a girl, who may not even turn out to be a genius (dumb fair girls are okay, they can be married of). Parents fail to realise that it is their upbringing and beliefs that make their offspring who they will eventaully become.

Worryingly, dark girls are exoticised abroad due to the connotations they represent of luscious imagery like mangoes, coffee, chocolate, satin, village belle, gold and beckoning eyes. Only the sultry girls seem to get anywhere in life. It implies that a fair person in India can be a 'good girl', but a dark girl must have wiles.

Or is India aiming to insidiously eradicate its dark races forever or confine them to adivasi tribes in forests, out of sight of civilization? With the way it's progressing, the question merits consideration.

What this world needs is education.

Of the kind that banishes ignorance, not perpetuates it.