Are we really fair?

I am a teenager and already aware that if you are dark, you are in for a tough life, especially with so many advertisements on TV which show how an Indian girl gets rejected by prospective suitors and at job interviews because she is dark and then she pick up a fairness cream and voila, in just seven days, she is a star. Well, just like those ad girls, in the past, I have had to suffer a lot for my skin colour.

For first 13 years, I was living in Delhi, where fair complexion seemed to be highly desirable feature. And, unfortunately, there were quite a few very fair girls in my locality and in school, and they made sure that I feel inferior because of my skin colour. Every now and then, one of my friends would say, “You’re dark but your sister is fair”, in such pitiful tones that it seemed like they were sympathizing with me for being the ugly duckling who has to live under the swan’s shadow. All these to an otherwise very active and popular girl.

When I was younger, I joined the Dance Club of my school. There were two dance groups. The first group was for the good dancers. Surprisingly, I turned out to be a pretty good dancer. Everybody said that. Then why was I in the second group. It was because there was no first group and second group. There was the ‘pretty’ group and ‘ugly’ group.

The first group got the better song, the better costume, more complements and the right to whine and sulk if the second group took a minute of extra practice time. I was in the second group. The first group was full of fair-y queens, we were the ladies-in-waiting. India is a place, where in a school function, even audience are not expected to appreciate really good dancing, but to exclaim “so cute” while watching the dancers in the front row.

I looked generally like any normal healthy girl. But, alas, my problem was that I was dark, and in India, and most part of the world adorable young princesses are always fair. Since childhood, all our English story books have been telling that all good fairy tale characters are fair complexioned. Think of the irony when in European background – Snow White’s stepmother say ‘who is the fairest of all’? But not ‘who is the prettiest of them all’? Imperialists have wired the fair-ness idea in our brain so strongly that there seems to be no escape. We even forget that many of our pretty princes in Indian mythology and history were actually dark and were considered beautiful.

In those days, everyday my friends would suggest use of sunscreens and bleaches for me. Those ads on TV irritated me so much that I could kill myself. As if that was not enough, soon the companies came up with fairness creams for men and TV soap operas about the ‘struggles’ of a dark-skinned girl.

Now here is the truth about our obsession with fairness creams. Businessmen selling cosmetics renamed bleaching products as fairness products and now happily minting money. Ads get us to believe that we are ugly, just to sell their products. Plus, there is a lot of clever marketing involved. And, they do not tell what else ‘fairness cream’ does. Well they corrode our skin. And, nobody is sure what its long term side effects are.

These days nobody says anything about my skin colour. Somehow, my skin seems to be a shade or two lighter (without those bloody creams), but I am not fair even today. I go to my new school in Mumbai now. Here boys and girls are much nicer and nature’s law of average is actually towards average complexion, so none of them are zombie white. In fact, people here are prettier than in my old school. Sure, here too people are complemented for being fair, but nobody is openly taunted for being dark. All of a sudden, I think Tyra Banks; a black model is really smart and beautiful. I don’t want to look like those fair girls on TV add and sit-coms now. I know that pretty people look pretty because they are pretty, not because they are fair. Now I know that I am not as ugly as I was once made to feel.

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(In Cuba – “white” Hispanic Cubans so pleasantly coexist with their “black” African counterparts. Well, that is the utopia, brought in by a proactive Government and positively activist citizens. There all dolls are to be made in two shades - fair and dark. Cuba has one of the highest literacy and educational standard in the world. Indeed, they used education to build a healthy nation and remove adverse prejudices.

So, education is the solution, not the fairness creams. In fact right education to give right attitude and a bit of social awareness and activism are all it takes to make the change. We did the same successfully against smoking and reckless smokers are no longer considered heroes.

We must think and act. After all it is one of the silliest (and mentally cruelest) prejudices which remain to be eradicated for a really enlightened India that threw out the Gore Log a long time back.)