It starts when children are young. The moment a child is born, relatives start comparing siblings skin colour. If it’s a boy difficulty are a little less whereas if it’s a girl child, she has no clue what she has to go through!! As soon as she turns the age to attain the age-old “ WISDOM” to attain fairness for generations, the phase of applying gram flour, milk and turmeric on the face daily starts. It starts with the immediate family but people don’t talk about it openly.
The desire to have fairer skin arises from the historical and traditional roots and till now are prompted and perpetuated by cosmetic advertising and global media images, which continues to sustain the idea that fair is only beautiful, allowing women more power and therefore dusky skin isn’t desirable and robs women of their potential of power. Power gives a sudden sense of authority. On a country, where the average skin tone is BROWN, fairer skin has always been given superiority. To gain this superiority, and the urge to be fair and desirable has landed Indian girls and women in the entrapped market of cosmetics.
Indian skin whitening market was growing at 18% per year is expected to achieve an annual market revenue of $720 million by 2023. Having a lighter complexion in women is one of the dominant aesthetic ideals because of the priorities subjected to Indian women are dominant behavioral ideas. Complexion has not only gained preference over marriage opportunities but also has a massive impact on her job and career. No matter how well educated you are, your capabilities are not decided by your grades and certificates but by a shade card as if you are not a human being but a wall paint whose worth is decided by the shade number. We are still the customer to these fairness brands because of the epitome of beauty is fairness is ingrained into our brains. It has reached up to a level where it is useless to try to change it.
The best way now is to learn how to embrace it. It’s quite normal for your grandmother to ask you to stay away from sunlight, to stop you from having tea and other tricks she has learned from her elders over the years. But now it’s your turn to make her learn that being dusky is equally beautiful if not superior. Power is not about how beautiful or attractive you are rather it is about how responsible you are to have it. But before telling her anything or to shut any other relatives, it is important for you to believe in yourself and your talent and understand that it is not significant for you to look fair but to feel beautiful.
Women all over the world have proved that fairer skin is not important in any field of work be it anything like space or even in the show business. To learn with an example, Kiran Majumdar Shaw, who is an Indian billionaire entrepreneur with a net worth of 380 crores USD or Priyanka Chopra or Nandita Das who have won accolades for their numerous performances not only in India but all around the globe.
Therefore I agree that fair is beautiful but I disagree that only fair is beautiful. Hence no skin color is superior and it doesn’t matter what skin tone you are but it matters that who you are and what do you want to achieve and have achieved. And for the record “cosmetics can only enhance your beauty and cannot create it”.
