#ExclusivelyInclusive: The (Double) Beauty Standards Of India!
|By- Komal Yadav|
What does beauty mean? Who sets these parameters of beauty?
Definition of being “beautiful” in India starts and ends with the word fair. Colorism in India has been around for ages. Indian television industry, Bollywood and Indian songs have done more damage to our perception of beauty. If you have a dark skin, the world is hell bent on trying to make your skin some shades lighter. Indian beauty market is flooded with fairness products, they use words like bright, glowing, and radiant but in the end everything leads to fairness.
Lord Krishna who was a dark hero of non Aryan natives is depicted to be dark blue in color in all the Indian mythology serials. KRISHNA his name itself means black and attractive. We worship Goddess Kaali in India but still colorism is taught by birth to a child. Many brown people are called by names like “kalu”, “bhuri”, "kaliya" and what not.
Truth of Cosmetic Industry in India:
We see advertisements of beauty products which focus on fairness to be the most important life asset, but we need to realize that being fair has nothing to do with beauty. Indian cosmetic market does not even have proper shades of foundation for dusky or dark skin people.
Major share of the beauty market in India is held by a product called “Fair and Lovely”, which by its name explains that we need to be fair to be lovely, and also there are many other products claiming ‘paye gora nikhar sirf 1 hafte me’. They decided to drop the word fair from the product and named it Glow & Lovely which doesn't prove any point. The problem is with the product and what it stands for more than its name.
We all are aware of the popular cosmetic brand called Maybelline who launched the range of foundation named Fit Me. Under this range, foundations for every skin tone were launched (in total 40 shades were launched under this range) but in Indian market only 17 shades were launched of this foundation range, which did not consider the dusky skin as a skin color. The foundations available in India were either for too fair or too dark skin colors. WHERE IS THE INLCLUSIVITY?
The major problem is we see ourselves through the glass of beauty standards set by the society, which affects our own lives; we often start judging ourselves on basis of these set standards. This is the only reason why men and women in India are growing up with the insecurities about their skin color. They go for many cosmetic surgeries, and inferiority complex and even mental health issues.
Don’t people believe that pregnant women can improve their unborn child's complexion by not drinking tea or drinking saffron-laced milk and eating oranges, fennel seeds and coconut? The elder women in families are known for telling young girls in the family to apply ubtans and various concoctions to lighten the skin because otherwise no guy will marry her.
This Colorism needs to stop, everyone is beautiful no matter what their skin color is , what their weight is , what their height is . These factors should not be the judging factors and we must learn to embrace ourselves. Beauty is more than the color of your skin, it comes from within as it is very well said “Beauty lies in the eyes of the beholder”
Our modern India is struggling between real and ideal beauty. Beauty is not something that can be measured by your skin color. You are just beautiful the way you are.
As responsible citizens of our society strongly need to stand against these fairness products and discrimination between fair and dark skin. We are the “now” of our nation who is responsible for tomorrow, so lets stand against these unfair beauty standards of India. Let us remind ourselves we don’t need to be fair to be lovely. Let’s embrace our diverse skin colors.
Let’s be fair to dark
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