Skin Colour, a social concern?

For the past few days I have been observing a funny new trend on a popular networking site. All of a sudden there are so many confession pages popping up out of nowhere, wherever you look there they are! Anyway, so out of curiosity I visited one such page. After a number of very weird mind-numbing “confessions” I happened to chance upon a confession of a girl belonging to South India, studying in a prestigious Delhi college, describing how her batchmates would often tease her for having a dark complexion.

Further down I read a similar confession, but this time by a guy!

This made me revisit the age old, apparently still not old enough issue of why we are obsessed with being fair? Whats with the colour? One would think that we have moved past such issues. Its the 21^st century for Christ’s sake! As it appears, we haven’t.

Owing to this obsession, the fairness cream market is flourishing at a rapid rate, the market size for fairness cream in India is estimated to be close to INR 820 crore. Another noteworthy point is that this growth is now not just limited to the female segment but has spread to the male segment as well.

It makes me wonder if this is some sort of residual post colonial after-effect? We link fair with superior? Or is it just a natural tendency of what you don’t have is always better, that we are dark skinned and the grass is always greener the other side? Whatever the reason maybe the fact remains that 61% of the dermatological market in India consists of skin lightening products.

Now you may ask what is wrong in people wanting to become a shade lighter, is it not a personal choice? What is the whole ruckus about then? Well there would have been no ruckus had this been just a matter of choice limited to oneself. However, since we live in a society, actions hardly occur in isolation. Thus comes the need to talk about it.

This obsession with fair skin has an effect at multiple levels, physical and psychological, individual and societal.

Talking in terms of health issues, World Health Organization (WHO) has recently issued a warning with regard to the use of fairness products stating that the common ingredient in skin lightening products — mercury — can have adverse effects such as kidney damage, reduction in the skin’s resistance to bacterial and fungal infections, anxiety, depression or psychosis and also peripheral neuropathy.
Apart from mercury, individuals should also check for harmful ingredients such as hydroquinone and ammonia which may lead to permanent disruption of melanocytes, which produces melanins, resulting in white patches. (Source: Times of India)

Moving on to its psychological ill effects, firstly at individual level. The constant projection of fairness as being the epitome of beauty, advertisements which demonstrate how becoming fair will make your husband/boyfriend/girlfriend love you more, how using a particular fairness cream will make you more confident, improve your chances of finding love, finding a job, etc, these do little for an individual’s self esteem and self confidence. Adolescence is the age when children are most pre-occupied by their body-image. Adolescent girls and boys start comparing themselves to these images projected by the media, considering them to be THE ideals and on finding themselves their ideals. Falling short of these may spiral down into a state of depression and suffer from low self confidence. This in no way stops at adolescence or is limited only to teenage years. The image gets carried forward well ahead into adulthood, the expression of which remains tacit or becomes explicit.

This comparison does not remain limited to self, it becomes a lens through which we start judging others as well leading to remarks like ‘kallu mai’, ‘kaalia’, ‘madraasi’ and many many more similar sounding degrading comments. Going by the number of incidents being reported on public forums, in counseling sessions and the rising demands in unisex salons for skin lightening treatments, this is no longer restricted to a particular gender anymore. NO gender has it easy. Gone are the days of tall, dark and handsome. Today the demand in the market is for fair and handsome.

Now while discussing the issue one should also keep in mind that this in no way is a one way process where the media sells and population consumes. Rather, it is a two way process where the media sells what the public demands. Popular media is a reflection of society and gets influenced by it as much as it influences it. There is no one culprit here. It’s a cycle where both the parties are feeding off each other. The public mindset of ‘fair is beautiful’ gets reinforced by the popular media, putting unnecessary pressure on those who do not fall in the said category.

Such a mindset and its propagation becomes a matter of social concern when it becomes a basis for discrimination and harassment for others, which unfortunately is still much prevalent among us. Fair, wheatish or dusky, an individual has the right to live with dignity and feel beautiful and confident regardless of the colour of their skin.

By Shraddhanjali Prakash