Greener Grass and Fairer Skin

It sounded just as strange then as it sounds now:  “Sir, you are looking very fair!”  This was the so-called compliment some talkative neighbourhood children offered me one afternoon.  They thought it was compliment because nearly everybody here wants “fair” skin.  It’s an unhealthy infatuation: light skin is idolized by the vast majority of the population.  You don’t see many dark-skinned models on billboards or in advertisements.  And perhaps not surprisingly, the biggest Bollywood stars nearly always have lighter skin.

Just how widespread is the fairness fixation?  There is a skin-lightening industry in this country generates nearly $200 million annually.  Skin-whitening products and fairness creams abound in the toiletries and cosmetics aisles of the shops.  They’re supposedly designed to lighten the colour of the user’s skin.  It’s fair to say (pun intended) that the obsession with fairness is an epidemic.

Bollywood mega-star Shahrukh Khan recently drew controversy for appearing in a television commercial for one such skin-whitening product.  In the commercial, Khan offers a tin of skin-whitener to a darker-complexioned guy who is unlucky with the ladies.  The guy then suddenly attains popularity with women because, apparently, the skin-whitener has lightened his complexion.  When this commercial was aired in London, England (targeted at the ethnic South Asian audiences there) not everyone was happy about it, and even Khan himself was criticized for endorsing the product.  Perhaps rightly so.

There are also groups in India who have spoken out against this superficial and arbitrary skin colour preoccupation.  Will they create meaningful change?  Will efforts to shift people’s perceptions of beauty be successful in the long-term?  This remains to be seen.

My friend Harish thinks it’s particularly funny when I tell him about the tanning industry in North America.  He takes great pleasure explaining to his other local friends how North Americans and Europeans spend millions of dollars trying to make their skin darker.  Harish’s friends, especially the ones who are less Westernized, have a hard time believing that people actually pay good money to have their skin darkened.  It’s like a joke to them.  …it puts things in perspective, doesn’t it?  The grass is always greener.

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