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The Complexion Complex
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''She has beautiful features and a very nice figure, she'd be pretty if she wasn't dark.'' Words that are symptomatic of a sorry state of affairs and, tragically, words that most of us have heard.
In Asian communities fair skin is held up as an ideal, and associated with superiority and worthiness not afforded to those of a darker complexion.
Today, fairness is equated with beauty to the extent that those that have it are considered blessed and those that don't are to a greater or lesser extent ostracised, as though they are at best disadvantaged or at worst disfigured.
So rampant is the aspiration to somehow emulate this fair ideal that it has given rise to a multi-million pound cosmetic industry and sprouted a toxic bootleg trade to meet and abuse growing demand.
Getting under the Skin Complex
Theories on the roots and reasons for this reverence for fair skin are many and varied.
Dr Dibyesh Anand from the University of Bath traces the chromatist preference for lighter skinned complexions to what he calls 'Mirroring Privilege' - "the tendency amongst the dispossessed majority to identify a visible characteristic of the dominant group and see that as the norm of beauty."
Such dominant groups include higher Indian castes such as Brahmins and Kshatriyas who are typically fair skinned, ergo darker skin is associated with lower castes.
Another dominant group relates to the highly controversial Aryan Invasion hypothesis. By this theory the earliest inhabitants of India were displaced and dominated by the light skinned 'Aryans' relegating the indigenous and dark-skinned 'Dasas' to lower, even slave status. In fact, references to dark skin as something objectionable, even evil, date back as far as 2500 BC when ancient Vedic poets propounded notions of dark skin being equated to evil where for example the demons or 'asuras' were always said to have black swarthy skin.
The 'colonial hangover' is a more recent demonstration of the same mind frame of our BC ancestors. The freedom and happiness brought about by independence, 60 years ago didn't erase the inferiority complex brought about by white colonial rule.
Throughout the ages to this day, fair skin has generally been associated with wealth. Not least as Asians continue to aspire to emulate their economically privileged Western counterparts (and one time oppressors) but also in a rather outdated and oversimplified spirit, dark skin is taken as a direct indication of working in the open sun - after all, nice girls don't have to work outdoors.
Gender is another factor that has probably contributed to the desirability of fair complexions. Hormonal differences between the sexes mean that women have less melanin in their skin, a fact that probably gave rise to the term the 'fairer sex'.
And thus over time through the interaction of a complex web of social, economic, cultural and historical factors a myth was born. Today it relentlessly lives on in almost every sphere of life.
For Darker, for Fairer
In the market of maritals the demand has traditionally always been greater for fairer skinned partners banishing many a dark-skinned, beautiful and talented young girl to quasi-pariah status.
Has it really become so that Asians have to look outside their own community to the West for acceptance regardless of the depth of their skin tone? If not regardless of, then at least because of, thanks to the positive 'exotic' value attached. One wonders whether hugely successful stars such as Naveen Andrews and Parminder Nagra, would have garnered the same popularity in their native homeland against the 'fair and lovely' rulers of Bollywood?
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