by Shruti Srikumar
“Indian Woman Commits Suicide Due To Husband’s Taunts About Her Dark Skin.”
“West Bengal: Unable to bear humiliation for ‘dark skin’, teacher commits suicide.”
21, 32, worst of all, 14. These are the ages of a few women who took their own lives because they preferred death over living with a dark complexion in India.
It’s astonishing how in an ever-changing world, where progress towards equality – LGBTQ+ rights, the black lives matter movement, and so on – so little is being said about the complete whitewashing of various different cultures. Few words are spoken about the harassment that dark-skinned individuals undergo due to something as trivial as the color of skin.
This ‘fair-skinned’ superiority has its origins in the caste system when higher castes would pride themselves on spending less time in the sun, making pale skin a status symbol, and later on in colonialism, when the arrival of the Britishers exemplified this thought.
As time went on, this archaic notion of fair-skinned superiority never diminished. In fact, it only increased in importance to people – epitomized by the Indian film industry, and by a wide array of skin-whitening creams and the advertisements that came with them.
A Manx actress, Amy Jackson, regularly plays the role of the “quintessential Tamilian”, taking away from true Tamilian actresses who could do her job better than she ever could. This is a general trend seen amongst the South Indian film industries, with more and more roles given to fair-skinned individuals regardless of their knowledge of the language, or acting expertise. The effect this causes is that men and women see this so often on the big screen, “Oh look how beautiful this actress is, look how pretty she is”, with the actress almost always with a light complexion, that fair-skin unconsciously finds its way into how they perceive beauty.
It doesn’t necessarily help how the same actors and actresses that these people look up to are ferociously campaigning for skin-whitening creams (Fair and Lovely, anyone?). Of course, the audience for these advertisements is oblivious to the eyes of the actors and actresses being a few shades lighter than they are in real life, and the clothes they’re wearing being far lighter than they should be. All the audience can focus on is the skin-whitening cream, the beautiful actress and the handsome actor, and the fame and power that comes with being fair-skinned. To the skin-whitening cream industry’s credit, these campaigns have been mostly successful: from 397 million dollars in 2008 to 638 million dollars in 2013, to nearly 4 billion dollars presently. The rage and frenzy to be fair and henceforth “beautiful” has truly taken over our society and is continuing to do so at an astonishing rate.
On a more optimistic note, however, there seems to be some progress being made. For starters, the entire “Define your skin tone” section on shaadi.com, India’s top online matchmaking website, has been removed due to backlash from Indians around the world. Johnson and Johnson repealed its skin-whitening creams last month, and Indian actors and actresses are being held more accountable for their inherently racist and discriminatory advertisements promoting fairness.
But, whitewashing isn’t restricted to India and its people. The whitewashing of the beauty and makeup industry in developed countries like the US and UK is an incredibly pervasive issue. Preconceived, and false, myths of “black don’t crack” and other such incorrect notions have resulted in inadequate products being provided for POC. MAC in the 90s, Eve Lom, and now Rihanna’s Fenty Beauty – these are few of the only companies that consider POC when creating products. Otherwise, the entire industry is so whitewashed that for skin complications like acne and hypopigmentation, there are almost no products for POC. This whitewashing carries over to male and female models in the industry. They’re predominantly white, subliminally creating a beauty standard that should not be held true. Children of color are whitewashed themselves, becoming insecure of their skin and complexion – which shouldn’t be an issue in the first place.
Moreover, people of color are further discriminated against for their skin tones. Makeup products are a lot easier to find for light-skinned African Americans as compared to people with darker skin tones. Apart from that many companies consider the natural hair curly hairdo or afros of people of color to seem “unprofessional” and many are forced to start using hair relaxers and straighteners from a young age since this “unruly” look does not meet the white standards for beauty. White and light-skinned models don’t authentically represent the vast majority of black women’s skin, hair, or bodies and are simply used as marketing ploys. These ads imply to the consumer that black women can wash their hair with a shampoo made for finer and straighter textures or use skincare products made for lighter women and suddenly look that way, too. This discrimination against people of color not only shows that white men and women are considered as the ideal definition of “beautiful” but also that they are considered to be the primary consumers of these products.
Although in today’s world there have been efforts made by various beauty brands in order to make the beauty industry more inclusive- the truth is that white beauty and Caucasian physical traits still dominate the benchmark for “beauty”. It is time that we, as consumers, hold these brands accountable for discriminating against people of color. Its time that the beauty industry stops thinking of the Beyonceès, Lupita N’yongos, and Frieda Pintos as merely marketing ruses.
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