Many South Asians see dark skin as ugly

Mike McPhate:

The young woman with pretty eyes and flawless diction aspires to celebrity. But her skin is too brown. One day, her sister hands her a tube of Fair & Lovely skin-lightening cream.

Flash forward. She's decked out in heels and a pink sari, her hair is styled in willowy curls like a film star, and her dusky complexion is pale, nearly as white as her smile. She lands her dream job as a cricket commentator. Mom wipes a joyful tear.

The storyline of such television advertisements, packaged by turn in themes of love and career, has helped to propel a blossoming market for skin whiteners in South Asia. It exploits a deeply rooted but largely unchallenged reality: to the Indian gaze, dark skin is ugly.

"Racism has become a part of the Indian psyche," Pavan Varma, author of Being Indian, said in an e-mail. "The real irony is that a brown nation looks down on the dark."

India, home to one-sixth of humanity and birthplace of four major religions, is a country bursting with variety. Inhabitants speak more than 1,500 native tongues, cook from at least 35 regional cuisines and align with as many as 772 registered political parties. Comprised largely of sunny tropics and deserts, most of its people have coffee-coloured skin.

But the sirens of Indian cinema and fashion are with few exceptions tall, slender and honey-hued. It's a colour worn by Aishwarya Rai, the green-eyed former Miss World and paragon of Indian beauty, but possessed by a small fraction of the general population.

Each Sunday, the fair ideal is put on display in the marriage ads that run in Indian newspapers. Male suitors request slim bodies, expertise in household work and skin tones from within the narrow band of "fair" to "extremely fair."

At least 75 per cent of Indian women aspire to lighter skin, according to Hindustan Lever Ltd., maker of Fair & Lovely products.

Studies of southern Asian women in the United States and Canada have found that the darker their complexion the less pretty they feel.

Generally, men seem to prefer lighter-skinned women in most cultures.