Well blogged, that.

Great post! I am what you would call 'wheatish' but was extremely fair when I was a child. I happen to like my tanner adult complexion, but my mother and grandmother harp on it all day. It's irritating!

I've said it before, but I still think the skin color preference is a reflection of class rather than racism. Workmen tend to bake outside in the sun a lot so dark skin becomes associated with manual labor. The US also had a preference for light skin up until the 60s or so when most people started working indoors. After that getting a tan became a sign of luxury (you have time to just laze around in the sun.)

It's not just an Indian thing either. I have also known more than a few Korean and Japanese girls who were pretty finicky about skin-tone. The ideal, supposedly, is to strive for ghostly translucence over there. I find that only slightly less off-putting than the prevalence of blepharoplasty.

All that said, I pray to all the Gods that the day never comes when we invent skin lightening plastic surgery. As if people didn't spend enough time as it is on inane superficialities.

The irony is that 2 of our most popular dieties are dark-skinned, and that darkness of complexion is (and has been) unabashedly celebrated in countless bhajans and prayers. So where and when did our phobia about a tannned complexion begin?

So where and when did our phobia about a tannned complexion begin?

Mostly because exploiting liberal guilt makes me smile.

Wow, what a great organization! Thank you for writing about this!! I am always thinking that there needs to be a movement to counter the crap that only light skin is considered beautiful. I have had a limited experience of colorism within the Indian and/or South Asian context. My mom and my family in India, have always complimented me and told me "black is beautiful" since I was kid and I always took it for granted that Indians were light and dark-skinned as the variety is seen by me amongst family and friends in Kerala. At the same time, I would here, "now mola don't stay out in the sun too long, you don't want to be too dark". Or hearing my beloved uncle, who happens to be light-skinned, when deciding on a wife, mention for particular girls, "well she is kindof dark for me". It's a mixed batch and since I also grew up in the US and on the beach, and forever heard my American friends tell me they loved my color, I feel I was never really marked negatively by the colorism - I guess with the negative came tons of positive comments. And whoever studied the best came way higher up in what made you attractive.

At the same time, from my viewpoint in Kerala society, and Indian society as a whole, I have always seen dark and light-skinned people succeed and be in positions of power - looking at our politicians to my father's successful friends. So that was another thing that helped me not be marked negatively by the colorism you would get.

Anyways these fair and lovely commercials are shameful!! It's truly disgusting and stars should be ashamed of themselves who peddle this crap --- and I've always wondered does this garbage work..

It's nice now, with the internet, to see the beautiful Indian models, many, many of whom are dark-skinned get appreciated in India. I hope things will change. In the meantime there's Lakshmi Menon and others, whose looks I can admire alongside the Aishwarya Rai beauties.

“What?” she said innocently, “It’s just suntan lotion so I don’t get dark.”

i would've went with the teeth whitener ruse.

It's not just an Indian thing either. I have also known more than a few Korean and Japanese girls who were pretty finicky about skin-tone. The ideal, supposedly, is to strive for ghostly translucence over there. I find that only slightly less off-putting than the prevalence of blepharoplasty.

Of course not - I don't think these skin lightening creams are more prevalent in South Asia...A friend of mine, Vietnamese American, who was traveling in Taiwan told me she could not find any moisterizers that did not have the bleaching element and so she had to use what she could buy. I do think many Indians are less ashamed to discuss the problem though.

YogaFire:
the skin color preference is a reflection of class rather than racism

A distinction without a difference. "Race" is a less clearcut concept in South Asia that the USA (where it isn't always as clear as people think it is). But bigotry based on skin colour, when due to race, class, ethnic origin, or whatever, is pervasive and pernicious in South Asia.

So lay off the colour-bigotry apologia. Philly Grrl is on the right track.

Agree with Yogafire @3 to most extent: I read that Chinese people had the same perception about dark skin, relating them to manual labor under the sun. But nowadays in China, the dark skin is coming to be prided by some as they show that the person has time and money to vacation in a sunny island. Here's a blog post from Chinese American perspective. Here's an article about more communities.

Having said that, I do think it is crazy that there is such strong prejudice in South Asian community, and the most sickening is that some people have sort of superiority complex just for their skin color (mostly because they don't have any other thing to feel good about themselves).

Why this bigotry against fair people? If we are touched, do we not bruise? If we go out, do we not burn?

So lay off the colour-bigotry apologia. Philly Grrl is on the right track.

Whether the preference for fair skin is an issue of irrationally valuing fairness or whether it's a reflection on class and labor makes a difference in the hows and whys of skin color preferences and, more importantly, actually gives you some idea of potential solutions that would actually work rather than barking up the wrong trees.

In this case, I don't think simply saying "Dark is nice too" is going to work as well as encouraging respect and admiration for people who spend hard days toiling under the sun.

is there any evidence these "dark is beautiful" campaigns actually work? they strike me as too obvious in a special olympics sort of way. i suspect kids know when they're being patronized. on top of that it s vaguely hypocritical, as if they're creating a new colorism in order to fight the old, hoping this overcompensation will result in an equilibrium. the ends justify the means.

but i don't think awareness is the answer here. whats needed is a lack or awareness, indeed deceptiveness. put hot dark chicks on the cover of vogue india but don't say anything about it. this way the dark is beautiful propaganda gets passed on subconsciously and in a decade or 2 Indians will be kicking the israelis off the beach cuz there's not enough room. just look how quickly the "skinny is beautiful" social construction became the ruling regime in the west. they didn't say that's waht they were doing, they just did it. and everyone except black people and j.lo just mindlessly went along for the ride. no questions asked.

Machiavellian Manju to the rescue again

is there any evidence these "dark is beautiful" campaigns actually work?

2 words. Strom Thurmond.

We can talk all day about what should be considered attractive...but we can all agree that Megan Fox is hot so is Naomi Campbell and Padma L.

Diet and exercise folks. And cut out the white rice. Everything else is just whining.

put hot dark chicks on the cover of vogue india

already done -

http://jezebel.com/5021990/dear-anna-im-outsourcing-your-job-to-vogue-india-8-pictures-that-explain-why

And cut out the white rice.

Again. The bigotry against fairness. Why should brown be preferred over white?

YogaFire: My mistake. I'm sorry. Colour-prejudice in South Asia is soemtimes downplayed by commentors, and I incorrectly though you were going in that direction.

As I have said before skin color is a major marker of hierarchy in India. People in high places are DISPROPORTIONALLY lighter skinned. Even in my Industry, which is negatively correlated with fashion, the higher management, buttscratching circles are all noticeably lighter and more Caucasoid than the multitudes from colleges in the southern hinterland who do the actual work. Apartheid in Indian society is more insidious and deep rooted than the institutional varieties that have been expunged from Africa. What is needed is a charge from below to shake the tree by lots of Tribals with guns and red flags. Bulldoze the ivory towers, throw all the white looking Bollywood actors into jail and brown will be beautiful again.

" Why should brown be preferred over white?"

Hahahaha excellent..seriously though its the protein :)

Like most things wrong with contemporary Indian culture, I like to blame the British.

upper class muslims of turkic and persian provenance freely referred to south asians as blacks, and termed native converts to islam "black muslims" (as opposed to themselves, "white muslims"). the british also made the distinction between black muslims and white muslims when trying differentiate between the ruled and rulers. some of these issues crop up in the historical narrative around tippu sultan, a muslim warlord who was not a white (i.e., foreign provenance) muslim (from what i have read, and from the portraits) and so not viewed with the same respect by muslim elites than would normally have been the case.

as for class vs.race, in the american context that's an irrelevant. different south asian groups mix together, and clearly there's a hierarchy of aesthetics whereby northwest groups with lighter skin and "sharper" features are considered gifted with more in the looks dept. or at least that's what i can gather from these message boards in the implicit (and sometimes explicit) hints left my commenters, especially by commenters who come from blacker snub nosed groups who suggest that they might be confused for punjabi or something to that effect.

there's an easy way to avoid all this stuff. just marry into a white family. no matter how "fair" or "dark" you might be perceived by other brownz we all look the same color to them, brown.

Here's an ad for Fairever made by a Chennai based company founded by Karunanidhi's son's son-in-law. Isn't any better than the competition.

the character in the Lever ad seems to be an Iyer/Iyengar type, from the boonies - Mylapore/Mambalam or even Vellore and Cuddalore. These groups are marginalized several times over. Being members of a "Forward Community" they don't have much of chance to enter the top professional schools - can't score high enough. State government jobs too are beyond their reach. Central government jobs or foreign grooms are the only alternative, and there's a long waiting line for them. Added to that being dull complexioned and meek doesn't help matters. But bleach yourself and suddenly things change! What a yarn! The girl's dad of course is using arcane knowledge from Ayurveda - supposedly a preserve of the Brahmins - that offers the only way they can "fight back". And of course as Brahmins do offer some practices worth emulating - educating women, changing themsleves to get ahead - this is held up as an exemplar for everyone! Very complex. I would like to talk to scriptwriter.

I would like to talk to scriptwriter.

p.s. hope you've dumped that oaf, Phillygrrl

People in high places are DISPROPORTIONALLY lighter skinned.

Correlation does not imply causation.
Maybe high position-->higher salary-->more $$ to spend on skin-lightening creams?

p.s. hope you've dumped that oaf, Phillygrrl

;)

Let me play the devil's advocate... what's intrinsically wrong with adults wanting to make themselves lighter-skinned because they believe it makes them more beautiful? I do think pursuing that ideal can go too far when it means that darker-skinned people get harrassed, discriminated against, etc. But so many pale white people believe that they'd be more beautiful if only they could tan. And the risks involved in laying out in the sun or in self-tanning are worse and have more proof to them than do the risks of using fairness creams. Another parallel is people who believe that they'll be more attractive if they lose weight. It's a little different because, for most people, losing weight also means being healthier, but let's be honest, most people are not thinking about their health when they go on stupid crash diets, they're just thinking about how they look. Not that I would endorse telling a 10 year old girl that she's fat and needs to go on a diet, which is kind of the equivalent of what your aunt did, I suppose. But when it's adults who want to take control of how they look, I'm a little iffier.

I get so annoyed by my relatives commenting on my color or when I have tanned, etc. But I also hate it when the people I'm with want to be out in the sun all the time (and it's mostly white people who do this). Partly because I never show that much skin so I don't like the discoloration that occurs between my face and neck and the rest of my body (I have used fairness creams in the past to try to get my face and neck to not be 10 shades darker than the rest of my body), but also because I don't want premature aging or skin cancer. Perhaps that's shallow, but I'm not much of an outdoors person anyway. So I'd rather not end up looking like I'm 35 when I'm 23, like the (again, mostly white) people I have known who are into serious 'adventuring' lifestyles.

It doesn't surprise me that the 'dark is beautiful' campaign originates in Tamil Nadu. It's probably the state with the some of the most notable social movements for the rights of the underprivileged, etc. Plus the fact that there are simply more dark-skinned people in TN, probably.

That commercial is ridiculously offensive, though. Ugh. I can't even describe how repulsive it is.

BTW, do most Indian airlines (Kingfisher, Paramount, IndiGo, etc.) have a fairness requirement for their flight attendants? They must be in the top 1% of fairness of Indians.

there's an easy way to avoid all this stuff. just marry into a white family. no matter how "fair" or "dark" you might be perceived by other brownz we all look the same color to them, brown.

I don't think that's true. I've been in large groups of Indians with white people, and traveled around India with white people, and they definitely noticed differences in skin color.

At first, I thought this "you're so smart but a pity that you're not fair" uneducated nonsense would die out when relatives and aunties saw me with my white-as-blue-ice husband. If he doesn't care, why should you crapheads? Now, I notice that they gravitate to him and almost bask in his whiteness, as if it rubs off with asociation, while not giving me the same amount of attention. Ugh.

Also loathsome (and will earn you severe rebuke from me) is how some Indian-American Democrat women I know like to compare themselves to or look up to Jackie Onassis but not Michelle Obama. The skin pathology is more than just about looks, it's also about race.

Going by past patterns, we can expect the following:

1. Accidental Freudian slips from people indicating that they're pale-skinned.

2. Indignant groans from Pagal Aadmi for Debauchery in response.

3. Manju defending the Freudian-slippers and kvetching that he cannot find shoes for his unnaturally large feet.

All that snarkiness aside, this was a good blogpost.

"Now, I notice that they gravitate to him and almost bask in his whiteness, as if it rubs off with asociation, "

I see this a lot. It's utterly grating.

It doesn't surprise me that the 'dark is beautiful' campaign originates in Tamil Nadu. It's probably the state with the some of the most notable social movements for the rights of the underprivileged, etc. Plus the fact that there are simply more dark-skinned people in TN, probably. That commercial is ridiculously offensive, though. Ugh. I can't even describe how repulsive it is.

tbh, which is why I am asking what a member of the family of Karunanidhi (supposedly a paragon of social justice) is doing, hawking a fairness cream. And as I have pointed out here on this very site, colour prejudice runs riot in Tamil Nadu, in popular speech, literature, the movies etc.,

Also loathsome (and will earn you severe rebuke from me) is how some Indian-American Democrat women I know like to compare themselves to or look up to Jackie Onassis but not Michelle Obama. The skin pathology is more than just about looks, it's also about race.

To put into a sports term, Jackie O=Brett Favre and Mrs.Obama=Aaron Rodgers.

@32 "To put into a sports term, Jackie O=Brett Favre and Mrs.Obama=Aaron Rodgers."

Do you know I'm a Green Bay Packers mega-fan (and thus would enjoy the hell out of this comment) or is it a complete coincidence?

Now, I notice that they gravitate to him and almost bask in his whiteness, as if it rubs off with asociation

Going by past patterns, we can expect the following:

The advertisement was disgusting. But perhaps no more than botox or boob jobs (or any cosmetic procedure) which alter one's natural anatomy and morphology to confirm to the acceptable standards of attractiveness.
I have a friend who has consistently shown a preference for oriental looks. He dated a Bhutanese girl, then a Nepalese one, finally tying the knot with a girl from the Indian North East. Another friend finds white girls naturally more attractive, and has married a white American girl. I am partial towards dark skinned beauties. All the girls I have gone around with so far have been from South India.
Should we all feel guilty of being racists? If not, why not the people who feel that lighter skin colour is more attractive? This group may contain a large number of people, but if this is what they feel, who are we to judge them?

We can talk all day about what should be considered attractive...but we can all agree that Megan Fox is hot so is Naomi Campbell and Padma L. Diet and exercise folks. And cut out the white rice. Everything else is just whining.

I'm not too sure about this anymore. First of all, I think the emerging scientific consensus is this:

we don't know how to lose weight. Some of the things Paul Campos is saying about obesity are controversial, but this isn't. Every single study which has attempted to make overweight people get thin without very risky surgery has failed completely and utterly. Fewer than 1% of patients ever keep the weight off.

There was a time when fatter women were considered attractive. Are those of us who prefer lean women the equivalent of the fair skin preference people? are we not products of some socially constricted biogtry too? Is there not even a bigger industry out there selling diet and exercise snake oil? don't fat people too experience a high degree of prejudice and discrimination?

if phillygirls bf told her to lose 5lbs would khoofi swoop in with such vengance?

There was a time when fatter women were considered attractive. Are those of us who prefer lean women the equivalent of the fair skin preference people

In other words, are clinics of the '"curls and curves" variety as evil as the makers of faiir and lovely/handsome'?

There's a difference between expressing a personal liking for a certain body characteristic, and indoctrinating your kids to have the same preference. AFAIK I know lots of parents who want their kids-in-law to be "fair" (at least by Indian standards), but I don't know of an equivalent active institutionalized hankering for curly hair or straight hair or plump or skinny or whatever. (Body weight correlates to overall health, unlike skin color, unless skin is green or gray).

we don't know how to lose weight.

What we don't know how to do is properly control for all the exogenous variables that you would need to in order to statistically isolate the causes of weightloss.

Do you know I'm a Green Bay Packers mega-fan (and thus would enjoy the hell out of this comment) or is it a complete coincidence?

Yeah , I just checked your blog and saw that you were a packers fan. I myself am the president of the Drew Brees fan club.

Even though I am the darkest person on either side of my (extremely large) extended family, I have never once experienced discrimination or snide comments because of it. But that doesn't mean that I don't realize that such stupid ideas still exist. So I definitely think Women of Worth is absolutely FABULOUS! Get it for telling all those lovely ladies that their dark skin is beautiful!

3. Manju defending the Freudian-slippers and kvetching that he cannot find shoes for his unnaturally large feet.

I'd prefer to have him enter my house barefoot anyway.

thanks port, but why do you alway insist i enter thru the backdoor?

We do know how to lose weight. The formula is simple: Burn more calories than you consume. The formula for staying steady is likewise simple: Consume only as many calories as you burn

There's no scietific evidence to support this thesis, especiallty if we add the criteria that the weight must stay off:

"In the 1990’s, the National Institutes of Health sponsored two large, rigorous studies asking whether weight gain in children could be prevented by doing everything that obesity fighters say should be done in schools — greatly expand physical education, make cafeteria meals more nutritious and less fattening, teach students about proper nutrition and the need to exercise, and involve the parents. One study, an eight-year, $20 million project sponsored by the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute, followed 1,704 third graders in 41 elementary schools in the Southwest, where students were mostly Native Americans, a group that is at high risk for obesity. The schools were randomly divided into two groups, one subject to intensive intervention, the other left alone. Researchers determined, beginning at grade five, if the children in the intervention schools were thinner than those in the schools that served as a control group.

They were not. The students could, however, recite chapter and verse on the importance of activity and proper nutrition. They also ate less fat, going from 34 percent to 27 percent fat in their total diet. Alas, said the study’s principal investigator, Benjamin Caballero, director of the Center for Human Nutrition at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, “it was not enough to change body weight.”"

Body weight correlates to overall health

even if this is true, an outside of obesity this is devbatable, it doesn't explain the preference for model-thin.

"Often, a visit to the doctor’s office starts with a weigh-in. But is a person’s weight really a reliable indicator of overall health?

Increasingly, medical research is showing that it isn’t. Despite concerns about an obesity epidemic, there is growing evidence that our obsession about weight as a primary measure of health may be misguided.

Last week a report in The Archives of Internal Medicine compared weight and cardiovascular risk factors among a representative sample of more than 5,400 adults. The data suggest that half of overweight people and one-third of obese people are “metabolically healthy.” That means that despite their excess pounds, many overweight and obese adults have healthy levels of “good” cholesterol, blood pressure, blood glucose and other risks for heart disease.

At the same time, about one out of four slim people — those who fall into the “healthy” weight range — actually have at least two cardiovascular risk factors typically associated with obesity, the study showed."

AFAIK I know lots of parents who want their kids-in-law to be "fair" (at least by Indian standards), but I don't know of an equivalent active institutionalized hankering for curly hair or straight hair or plump or skinny or whatever

fat camp

It's funny. I was at a cafe this weekend with two of my friends when this young Indian couple walked in with their 2 or 3 year old daughter. All three of us couldn't stop looking at them, then my friend remarked: "These Indians have such a beautiful tanned complexion" and we all agreed. They were dark olive and their kid was gorgeous.

For non-Indians (like myself), the tanned skinned is absolutely, absolutely, more attractive, than paler skin. Frankly, it makes you look more exotic, which is actually a good thing (no plain Jane types). That's why so many people are going gaga over Padma Lakshmi and Sanjay Gupta. I even heard a right wing radio host going gaga over Zain Verjee.

And another thing: You will age much better with darker skin. No need for botox, plastic surgery and all of that other stuff. You won't need it. The melanin is nature's best skin protectant and as of today, no artificial replacement of it has been found so don't get rid of your natural melanin!

I've told people before: blonds look good at 25, but after that, it's pretty much downhill from there.

Nandita Das is what? 40? she looks 25.

Thanks for this post. I was lucky to grow up in a household where my mom encouraged my sister and me to get "nice tans" in the summertime. It was only later on in life, when I started mingling in the larger Indian community in our area, that I realized that people didn't find me as attractive or beautiful because I was not fair. What an eye-opening experience that was ... On another but related note, I'm expecting my first child in just a few days and I've been advised to drink milk with saffron, and kept wondering why.Though saffron is supposed to have health benefits, when I looked it up, I found this bulletin board with all these moms and to-be-moms talking about how they wished they could have made their infant daughters' skin more fair and how saffron could help with that. I spent a very long time reading these thoughts, some from miserable women who don't want their daughters teased etc.etc. and it made me tremendously sad. No matter what my daughter's skin color is, I have hope that she can grow up in a world that finds her beautiful and doesn't demean her confidence with comments that make her feel invalid ... or that ever tries to make me feel like it was my fault she's not as fair as she could have been because I didn't drink enough saffron milk during my pregnancy ...

Leave girls, even many guys want to become fair (SRK Fair)

One of my cousin (7 years), who has a very fair complexion & used to hang around with my dad (is dark). Another cousin jokingly told him "if you go near a dark person you will also become dark". The poor kid believed it & was scared of going near my dad!!

A snippet of conversation with my friend
BrownGuy: Dude, There is so much sunshine here. I thought i would become fair after coming here. (to US)
Me: !!!

I haven't heard about saffron with milk, but I've heard something along the lines of almonds in milk making your children very light. Among my malu cousins, I was always the dark one and no one was more upset about it than my mother. She accused her sister in law of hiding the secret of drinking almonds with milk so only her daughters would be fair.

I've grown up sensitive about my skin color, and now at "marriage season" I'm feeling the heat even more. I've been given like 20 different types of face masks that supposedly will make me lighter and my mom wouldn't even consider a dark man as a potential son-in-law.

When will it ever end?

I suspect skin color is a sensitive issue for most of us because we've grown up in close contact with the west (or in it), and skin color is practically synonymous with race here. This isn't the case in India though - skin tone preference derives mostly from what it signals about social status. Skin color is not correlated with an axis of identity (with some exceptions), so how is it bigotry? It's essentially the same as preferring fat women because that signals affluence. Just another preference that reflects what the society views as desirable.

The advertising that's actually bigotry is most matrimonial ads. The insistence that lower castes cannot marry into your family is much more troubling than wanting a fair daughter in law.

And yes, it's still stupid and illogical and must be dealt with by the forces of good. But this approach is prolly ineffective, as pointed out by Manju.

but I don't know of an equivalent active institutionalized hankering for curly hair or straight hair

institutionalized hairism

I've been in large groups of Indians with white people, and traveled around India with white people, and they definitely noticed differences in skin color.

yes, the type of white people who would travel around india. these are not typical white people (frankly, they are not typical people, period). back in the united states, sanjay kumar, ex-ceo of computer associates who immigrated to the USA from sri lanka, wore a "i am not an iranian" t-shirt in the late 1970s (there were some political issues that made iranians unpopular in the late 1970s :-) in many parts of europe the roma ("gypsy"), who are about 50% european and 50% south asian, and so run the gamut from totally white to totally brown in appearance (with most in the middle), are called "blacks." despite the fact that most roma are much lighter skinned than the typical south asian, or even the typical punjabi. my point is that say you are a very dark-skinned girl who was raised in the type of south asian family made to feel bad about being comparatively dark skinned vis-a-vis your fairer relatives. if you marry a white man you remain visibly dark-skinned, but the more salient reality is that you're brown, period. your "lighter"-skinned cousins are invariably going to be the dark swarthy ones if they marry into a white family as well.

Isnt it interesting that most of the famous Indians or INdian Americans in the west are dark skinned compared to the celebs in India?

There's no scietific evidence to support this thesis, especiallty if we add the criteria that the weight must stay off:

I can't even think of how to arrange an experiment to properly evaluate the biology behind weight-loss to my satisfaction unless I was able to actually put people in cages with strictly controlled diets and activity schedules. We can evaluate the efficacy of specific policies, such as school lunch programs, in making kids healthy, but even that runs into some problems with messaging they receive through the TV and other sources.

Phillygrrl, I love you forever for writing this.

I hate the dark skin prejudice among South Asian. My great-grandmother back in India repeatedly tells me in Telugu that I'll never get married because I'm dark, and she keeps at it even when I tell her I love my dark skin, and that I don't want a stupid Indian boy if he is racist about dark skin.

It's essentially the same as preferring fat women because that signals affluence

I am a dark skinned desi. I know the pain both personally and professionally and have felt it keenly.

See the difference below - I just swapped words around
1) "Thin" blonde woman is more "beautiful" than a "fat" blonde woman
2) "Fat" light skinned is more beautiful than a "thin" dark desi.

really no difference at all between desi fondness for light skin and the western fondness for skinny women.

if phillygirls bf told her to lose 5lbs would khoofi swoop in with such vengance?

The way I see it the world likes to be in between. Not many people like to be pale white other than Nicole Kidman and her fans. Its not great to be too fat or even too thin - oh the amount of comments indian aunties pass on you if you are in that category. Therefore there's always market in this world for diet pills and lightening creams. As I write this I have spread bleach on my face - to cover the unwanted hairs.. nobody wants to date a woman with equal facial hair as them! Come on now who's going to condemn me for that?

Whenever I see a dark Punjabi kid with no need for Word spellchecker, I think it must of been the handiwork of Mahalingam Karuppuswamy the Randy Peripatetic Doodhwallah

I live in India and spend a lot of time on outdoor activities/sports. I notice a significant change in people's behaviour when I come back darker from an outdoor break. Somehow I get less respect when I am darker - from taxi drivers, security guards and other service providers, but also from people I do business with. Not that anyone is rude, but I distinctly feel my social status goes down a notch - the service providers no longer display their usual obsequiousness (a good thing, but for the wrong reason), and in business settings I have to assert myself more to be heard and taken seriously.

In India, fair skin is a lot more than just a benchmark of aesthetic beauty (though it is that too, even for men). It is a class- (and very likely a caste-) marker.

BTW, do most Indian airlines (Kingfisher, Paramount, IndiGo, etc.) have a fairness requirement for their flight attendants? They must be in the top 1% of fairness of Indians.

Yet by international standards these top 1% of indians are still pretty dark.

OK, how about a little "let he who is without sin..."

(The girls in particular) Have you ever expressed a preference for tall men? And by extension turned down a shorter man? How about judging a person by his clothes, facial hair, Body Odor?

I don't see why people get their panties all up in a bunch when people are judged based on skin color, while other superficial traits - like height, weight, clothing - are routinely used to judge people, and are considered completely acceptable.

I think the outrage is multiplied by the fact that there exists a "cure" for dark skin. "How dare you try to fix something that we're desperately trying to classify as a non-problem?" Well, don't use it if you are against skin color being used to judge people. Good for you. For the rest of the people, can we just let them ask for and receive what they want?

I find Bluebulb's (64) comments refreshing and honest.

Society has some norms and standards that we have to contend with them. Preference for fair skin color is one of them. This is just a fact that we have to live with. No amount of campaigns, awareness, advertisements is going to change that one bit; I am sorry.

What is wrong however is ridiculing and making fun of people in the public on that account. That is certainly bad manners and should not be tolerated.

In passing I should mentione, in many traditional south Indian arranged marriages it is common place that the groom chosen could be darken skinned. The reverse scenario is also quite common. A common refrain would be from the elders .. we would not get such an agreeable horoscope, etc. So do not let colour be the deciding factor. i would think this is less common in love marriages where emotions play a larger role.

Manu wrote:
There's a difference between expressing a personal liking for a certain body characteristic, and indoctrinating your kids to have the same preference.

Bluebulb wrote:
don't see why people get their panties all up in a bunch when people are judged based on skin color, while other superficial traits - like height, weight, clothing - are routinely used to judge people, and are considered completely acceptable.

Folks, there is a big difference between a personal preference for a particular physical trait --- Manju prefering women with six toes, Bluebulb demanding three nipples -- and a societally determined and enforced preference correlated, to a great extent, with hereditary social status. I've heard plenty of old desi aunties denigrating "kala", linking it with "chamar", or whatever else they think is bad. It's not the same as a drunken frat boy dissing a "fattie"

(Totally offtopic, Razib wrote: narrative around tippu sultan, a muslim warlord . Seriously? What, next you'll call Ranjit Singh a "Sikh terrorist"? Macaulay has worked wonders.)

Isnt it interesting that most of the famous Indians or INdian Americans in the west are dark skinned compared to the celebs in India?

That's easily explained by the fact that there are much higher standards for talent to stand out in a population of 1 billion, as compared to a population of a few million.

What is wrong however is ridiculing and making fun of people in the public on that account. That is certainly bad manners and should not be tolerated.

I agree; It may hurt if someone isn't attracted to me b/c of my dark skin, but I know I have attributes that I like in people. The problem with these ads, is that they are endorsing a product that is harmful to the skin, as far as I know, and openly approving of degrading someone b/c of their dark skin color. The Wow campaign is awesome to me - it's not putting the beauty of someone who may have light-skin, but just saying dark skin is also beautiful and you don't need to put on bleach, something that I can't perceive as not being harmful to the human skin (any dermatologists around that can comment?).

And as far as losing weight, I see weight loss as a healthy thing. I have since grade school seen the fat children be badly bullied b/c of their weight, and these kids were white. Most things in the fashion industry cater to a type of weight that rarely do I see among most American peers, whether it is the right nose or space between the eyes, or height. But I would find it horrible if there were ads running in the US that showed a fat women going for job and being turned down, as the employers make snide remarks about her weight, and the solution was the father getting her to use some weight loss pills.

the obsession with all things fair.

Say what you will about Michael Jackson, he obsessed over all races.

"there's an easy way to avoid all this stuff. just marry into a white family. no matter how "fair" or "dark" you might be perceived by other brownz we all look the same color to them, brown."

. Been here for gadzillion years, had countless close encounters of the third and fourth kind with whites, and I'd say they do have a realization of different Indian looks. They're not blind, but the distinctions they make or don't make, are interesting. It has to do with the color spectrum Americans were used to dealing with. There was black, and a few mulattos, there was white, and then there were them Indians, as in Red Indians, the kind in westerns. Most people who were not in one of these groups, were seen as Caucasians. Even East Indians--they were brown Caucasians. Some non-European people sort of slid into the European color continuum because that's how they were perceived at some visceral level. Only thing I can come up with. It's all in the looks and general impression.

Americans of your generation have been conditioned not to mention such things. However, I do think they notice differences among features more than color differences in the case of Indians, unless the color is very light, and this has surprised my family at times. I think most do know about the varied "races" in India, but have a rather crude sense of the north-south dichotomy as being the explanation.

Comments like the one below has forced me out of lurkerhood:

Lol. Lets face it, the typical desi has got to be among the dumbest and most insecure people anywhere.

I agree that the ad is obnoxious but I also agree with other commenters that the "fair is beautiful" notion in India is not equivalent to racism in the West. I'll change my mind if someone can provide a reference that shows that people with darker skin have a harder time finding jobs in India. For what it's worth, that problem certainly exists for overweight people in the west.

So, what's wrong with believing fairer skin is more attractive? There are studies that suggest greater facial contrast is perceived as more feminine, so it seems intuitive that women who are fairer would be viewed as being more attractive. And let me clarify that I definitely fall in the darker half of the Indian population. Personally, I've never had to deal with hurtful comments about my skin color (but I'm sure it happens to others and that is certainly regrettable). All I'm saying is that I don't see why everyone has to be viewed as being equally attractive. I'm fairly average in physical appearance but I still have plenty of other reasons for having high self-esteem.

Alright, I'll disappear back into the shadows again now.

-V

I live in India and spend a lot of time on outdoor activities/sports. I notice a significant change in people's behaviour when I come back darker from an outdoor break. Somehow I get less respect when I am darker - from taxi drivers, security guards and other service providers, but also from people I do business with. Not that anyone is rude, but I distinctly feel my social status goes down a notch - the service providers no longer display their usual obsequiousness (a good thing, but for the wrong reason), and in business settings I have to assert myself more to be heard and taken seriously.

Vanya -
Comments like the one below has forced me out of lurkerhood:

I would just treat anoop/prema as a troll.

And let me clarify that I definitely fall in the darker half of the Indian population. Personally, I've never had to deal with hurtful comments about my skin color (but I'm sure it happens to others and that is certainly regrettable). All I'm saying is that I don't see why everyone has to be viewed as being equally attractive. I'm fairly average in physical appearance

Well-said. But do you like the ad that phillygrl writes about from the Wow organization?

the typical desi has got to be among the dumbest and most insecure people anywhere

well give him a break... being married to such a comedy and televison giant would take a toll on anyone's confidence.

I'm so glad people are starting to see past this nonsense. I notice subtleties in advertising all the time, like how the inter-racial couples
in Air India's new campaign always feature white spouses. What, we can't marry anyone else? Marrying outside the race is only OK, if the
person is white? We seem to revel in our colonial roots instead of realizing the benefits of being who we are and leaving behind biases
towards our own people. We shouldn't complain then, ever of being discriminated against, because we're guilty too.

At first, I thought this "you're so smart but a pity that you're not fair" uneducated nonsense would die out when relatives and aunties saw me with my white-as-blue-ice husband. If he doesn't care, why should you crapheads? Now, I notice that they gravitate to him and almost bask in his whiteness, as if it rubs off with asociation, while not giving me the same amount of attention. Ugh.

That sounds awful. But I went to a wedding between and Indian woman and a white man recently, and no one in her family displayed this attitude. They were welcoming and loving without debasing themselves... I just felt the need to say this because of trolls like anoop/Prema.

There's a difference between expressing a personal liking for a certain body characteristic, and indoctrinating your kids to have the same preference. AFAIK I know lots of parents who want their kids-in-law to be "fair" (at least by Indian standards), but I don't know of an equivalent active institutionalized hankering for curly hair or straight hair or plump or skinny or whatever. (Body weight correlates to overall health, unlike skin color, unless skin is green or gray).

I wouldn't call preference for fairness 'institutionalized' if preference for someone thin isn't. I think way, way, WAY more people, including aunties and uncles, care about thinness and height in a potential daughter-in-law than they do fairness. And it's something that their sons obviously will care about too. I wouldn't call that 'institutionalized' though, that makes it sound like it's some kind of edict, when it's culture.

I was lucky to grow up in a household where my mom encouraged my sister and me to get "nice tans" in the summertime. It was only later on in life, when I started mingling in the larger Indian community in our area, that I realized that people didn't find me as attractive or beautiful because I was not fair. What an eye-opening experience that was ...

What about when someone realizes that people don't find her as beautiful because she's fat? Would you say that's equivalent?

yes, the type of white people who would travel around india. these are not typical white people (frankly, they are not typical people, period).

oh right, how could I forget, you're the expert on white people, aren't you?

my point is that say you are a very dark-skinned girl who was raised in the type of south asian family made to feel bad about being comparatively dark skinned vis-a-vis your fairer relatives. if you marry a white man you remain visibly dark-skinned, but the more salient reality is that you're brown, period. your "lighter"-skinned cousins are invariably going to be the dark swarthy ones if they marry into a white family as well.

that may be your point, but you essentially said that white people won't notice skin color gradations, when that's obviously too much of a generalization. since they do, which i know from personal experience... in fact many times people have commented to me 'so-and-so bollywood actor/actress is really light-skinned' or even sometimes 'they don't look indian.'

and my point is that everything doesn't revolve around white people for many south asians, even ones who live in the united states. if they prefer someone with fairer skin, it's fairer skin WITHIN THE SOUTH ASIAN CONTEXT, obviously not in a white context. yeah it may be wrong, but people responding to it by saying 'well white people don't care' basically seem to be saying that only what white people think matters. which is kind of fucked up.

Basically, I mean to say, even the stupidest most ignorant white person in the world should be able to tell the difference between Aishwarya Rai and Prabhu Deva.

I've heard plenty of old desi aunties denigrating "kala", linking it with "chamar", or whatever else they think is bad. It's not the same as a drunken frat boy dissing a "fattie"

Many fat people would disagree with you. Fat is associated with lazy, poor moral character, stupid, etc.... many bad qualities.

We shouldn't complain then, ever of being discriminated against, because we're guilty too.

Would anyone say that Freida Pinto isn't good looking. She photographs fairly light (makeup, lightning etc) but her candids show her to be fairly dark. Can deep, personal likes/dislikes really change? If granny doesn't like little Sonali playing tennis because she'll get dark then can anything be done? Are very dark Indian men considered less handsome...if they are doctors?

...frankly, they are not typical people, period

Huh? Is that in the American context? I know quite a few 'typical' people from the UK and Australia, for instance, travel to India (people who don't go there just to get stoned etc.).

PS: anoop = prema / bhima / Dhoni...?

well give him a break... being married to such a comedy and televison giant would take a toll on anyone's confidence.

Indians are quite racist indeed. I noticed that Punjabis, especially, have the most racial elitism. Just my Rs.2.

Would anyone say that Freida Pinto isn't good looking

Pinto is overrated. And personally I feel Pinto is nothing much to look at. Even Time magazine put Pinto in a worst of all time list. It does not matter if Pinto was photographed in B&W or colour, the world would have been better off without Pinto.

BTW you misspelled Ford

I think one way of synthesizing the comments here is that they reflect disagreement about the perniciousness of "colorism" in desi-culture. In the West, a history of slavery and racial discrimination has led to "colorism" being banned and to the enforcement of social norms that constrain its being discussed in public in a disparaging way. Presumably, though, we don't want to/can't afford to bring out the "big guns" of the law and shaming norms for every form of discrimination--for example, few think that preferences over issues like which color clothing is worn or over food preferences (e.g., there are those in my family who won't eat with non-veg's, but there isn't much of a movement in the US to outlaw that--they're sufficiently idiosyncratic that the effect of their discrimination doesn't get totalizing or pervasive) merit legal or aggressive non-legal stamping-out. So, the debate is really over whether colorism in desi-culture is merely distasteful at times but lacking in sufficient stigmatization, etc. to merit getting out the "big guns," or over whether it is in fact pernicious enough to warrant being put in the relatively small camp of dimensions of discrimination that we try to stamp out.

Let's also not get too carried away with justifying the dislike of "fat people" by saying fat=unhealthy, and therefore by hating on fat people you are somehow advancing health causes. You don't like fat because you find that particular superficial quality unattractive, and that's fine by me. Just don't paint everything with some sort of altruistic brush.

Also, this "Dark is Beautiful" campaign, and even that campaign by Dove where they used curvy women are just silly attempts to alter perception. For the most part no one has to tell a person what he/she should consider attractive. Any attempt to "shame" people who have superficial preferences by calling them names like "racist" is nothing but snobbish bullying.

Pinto is overrated. And personally I feel Pinto is nothing much to look at.

au contraire, its almost universally acknowledged that pinto gets excruciatingly hot when rear ended.

87. Manju
**snicker**

Manju you're talking about a Gremlin.

This thing about whites being stupid because they can't recognize the various shades of brown is just bizarre.
It would be like expecting browns to distinguish between the various ethnicities of white. And really, who cares?

As for changing the beauty ideal(I hate to admit it) Manju made the best point:

put hot dark chicks on the cover of vogue india but don't say anything about it

If not, why not the people who feel that lighter skin colour is more attractive? This group may contain a large number of people, but if this is what they feel, who are we to judge them?

Wow. I'm shocked at the level of ignorance here. Posters on SM consider themselves so educated but many peope aren't using common sense. People that argue that this isn't related to racism always argue the followig bad points:

1.Dark skin was associated with working outdoors while light skin is associated with the indoor elite: The most basic amount of common sense should dictate that this is inappropriate for dark-skinned races/nations whose dark skin cannot be equated with a suntan! This is also stupidly forgetting that dark skin is genetic and will be inherited by the elite of that nation. All and I mean all cases of light-skinned elites within dark-skinned nations have been the cause of invasion and mainly Western Imperialism, not by staying indoors. Get real people. And so what if there are naturally light-skinned Indians. There are full-blooded light-skinned Africans! Something or someone has to influence favoritism toward that group over the natural darker complexions unless you think it's just natural to prefer light-skin which would be another bad assumption.

2. Caste correlates with skin color: I’ve been told the opposite and have read the opposite in scholarly books. Any book I’ve checked out on caste mentions nothing about skin color or the elites being lighter than the poorer classes. Upper class, by the way, doesn’t neccessarily mean upper caste.

Now if the elites in India are disproportionately lighter skinned than regular Indians than that would still have something to do with their ancestry and therefore race. India has been invaded many times by foreign nations and this might be the reason for the light skin of the upper class if this state of things is precolonial . Just because this has gone on for centuries doesn't make it right for people to ignorantly associate the darker skin of the indigenous indians with working outdoors! That would be just as stupid as of passing off Latin America's skin color/racial hierarchy as simply lack or abundance of sunexposure if it were to continue for thousands of years.

Here's my response to the arguement that this is precolonial:

3. Colorism dates back to the Aryan Invasion/Migration: This theory has been debunked and is obsolete, yet it continues to be taught in Indian schools

4. All of India’s invaders/rulers were light skinned: The assumption being that because Persians, Arabs, Mongolians, the Turkish etc. were lighter relative to the indigenous Indians, they must have used their lighter skin as a badge of superiority over the darker native population. This is projecting a European construction of racial superiority onto other nations just because they were "light-skinned." Unless anyone has historical proof that these nations made Indians feel inferior because they were darker, don't assume it. Another thing: there can be color differences between conqueror and native; elite and non-elite and for skin color to not be an issue. It's not like light-skin superiority is natural. Someone has to intentionally make it a matter of difference or inadequacy. And don’t assume that all light-skinned nations behaved this way. There are so many other ways human beings can make petty differences between themselves besides skin color.

5. Bollywood isn’t racist. It’s run by Desis: So what? There were old films in the 1920/30s that starred only light-skinned blacks made by blacks. Is it not imitating white bodies just because all involved are black? That's why there's something called internalized racism. It's when a group of people perpetrates a form of prejudice on themselves that was practiced against them from outsiders. Bollywood didn’t get is name from nowhere. Not only did it set out to mimic the professional film quality of Hollywood, but it mimicked (and still does) the white standard of beauty in an Indian form.

This isn't the case in India though - skin tone preference derives mostly from what it signals about social status. Skin color is not correlated with an axis of identity (with some exceptions), so how is it bigotry?

Tall height for a man, a nice waist hip ratio on a woman, a slender build etc are justifiable human preferences because they indicate human health. From an evolutionary standpoint, the preceding characteristics ensured the ability to protect one's family, fertility and overall survival of the species respectively. From a Creationist standpoint (I'm Creationist) Adam and Eve as the first humans possessed all of these ideal physical traits because they were made perfect. Ever since the Fall, however, sin has degraded mankind physically and spiritually from this ideal. Whichever story you believe, in the fact is that universally humans innately prefer the above physical traits because we are remembering in a sense the physical ideal we have deteriorated from. The current thinness obsession is just a sick manmade beauty standard like the valuing of fat bodies was in the Old World. Neither one is healthy or a natural preference.

Skin color on the other hand, is related to race which is socially constructed. How one reacts to differences in complexion or even if they notice it at all would be the result of social conditioning. Dark skinned "races" or nations did not originally lust after pale skin. Ancient Africa, the Ancient Americas, the Middle East and yes India were strongly proud of their natural complexions (read The Travels by Marco Polo). This light skin over dark colorism is a recent phenomenon that is primarily due to white global dominance. The only exception in my opinion would be East Asia or any light skinned nation where the indoors-outdoors explanation would truly be applicable.

This was a very long post but I had something to say.

Folks, there is a big difference between a personal preference for a particular physical trait --- Manju prefering women with six toes, Bluebulb demanding three nipples -- and a societally determined and enforced preference correlated, to a great extent, with hereditary social status.

Ikram, the examples on display-- weight and straight hair within the black community (the chris rock movie link)--both fall arguably within the "societally determined and enforced preference correlated, to a great extent, with hereditary social status" category.

From a Creationist standpoint (I'm Creationist) Adam and Eve as the first humans possessed all of these ideal physical traits because they were made perfect.

#90gem,

What color where Adam and Eve?

For an example of a "light skinned" nation where skin color didn't matter look at Ancient Rome. I'm sure the Romans conquered many civilizations that were darker than them, such as ancient Nubia, Moab or Elam. Roman slaves came from all over, most were from Europe yet, there was no skin color hierarchy with the Ancient Romans. A blond fair-skinned Celt was considered just as much an alien as a black skinned Nubian. The only people whom the Romans considered superior were themselves.

My point is that Indians including those posting here are taking colorism so much for granted that they're unable to connect it to the larger picture of world history and racism or why some can't see the difference between body preferences (justifiable) and skin color brainwashing (not justifiable). Preferences for lighter complexiones would be free of any racist undertones if it hadn't been the result of racial subjucation or Imperialism.

Let's rewind. If Europe had not ruled the world or if a dark skinned nation were the global rulers most of the world inhabitants would not want lighter skin.

Or... If India didn't care about skin color and had an equal appreciation for all skin tones --the result would be that actresses, singers and journalists would range the full rainbow, no one would object to a potential spouse because of their complexion and therefore men's preferences would not all be skewed toward fair-skinned women. Personal preferences are variable and are to be acquired on one's own not spoon fed by society's prejudices. The fact that South Asian men overwhelmingly desire a fair bride proves that their 'preference' was mass induced not individually acquired

In addition to public praise and family pressure, TV's exclusive portrayal of fair-skinned women as beautiful has affected the subconscious of countless Indian men who have been bombarded with these images since childhood. Therefore it formed their first impressions of beauty. Had men seen dark-skinned women as glamorous actresses on TV and movies since childhood then that would have formed what they considered beautiful. Images are powerful things. Brainwashing (and lies) is as much omission as it is addition.

The problem is not the preference. The crux of the matter is the context of how it happened

What color where Adam and Eve?

Madam-n-Steve,

They were brown. They were made out of dirt (not sand LOL!) and dirt is brown.

They were brown. They were made out of dirt (not sand LOL!) and dirt is brown.

By dirt, you mean soil? If so, I have seen black soil, red soil and brown soil. Why do you think brown soil was picked?

LoL! Madam and Steve!

Any soil color would prove they definitely weren't Fair and Lovely!

If dark skin is undervalued, then there should be plenty of otherwise good looking (tall, good figure, uniform tone and pleasant features) Indians who are being discounted due to their darker skin. Which means the field is relatively open for those who dont care to discriminate on skin tone. It should even out, should it not? I suspect that in fact skin tone (at least in India) is correlated with other aspects we care about and so even without the class and caste status marker function, skin color might actually trigger a response by virtue of this correlation. And perhaps in those groups where this correlation is greatest, one would see the highest degree of light skin color preference (punjabis?) and less in groups where such a correlation is murky at best (southies?).

"au contraire, its almost universally acknowledged that pinto gets excruciatingly hot when rear ended."

Funny you should mention that. I was in a Pinto (a type of car, not the actress, that was known for spontaneously igniting) in 1981, and it did spontaneously ignite. We shot out of it as soon as we saw the smoke curling up out of the hood, and three minutes later the flames were two stories high. Never saw such nervous firemen.

"This light skin over dark colorism is a recent phenomenon that is primarily due to white global dominance."

Aren't those dominators all in tanning booths? Nobody's satisfied. Come on, possums. The Indian hyper-awareness of color predates the freckled conquerers. It goes way back in the mid-east, and is present in the Bible--references to fairness being equated with beauty are pretty common, though i couldn't quote you chapter and verse; and it goes way back in India too, though if you go back far enough, the really cool people were all blue skinned and if you weren't blue, you just weren't in. Who wants to be blue today?
You do have a good point about the indoor-outdoor status thing though. That is clearly traceable in America, with the advent of vacations at the beach beginning in 19th and early 20th centuries, and the decline of the percentage of people working in the fields. You had to look like you had been in sun and fun without looking as if you had done any work.
Let's just all be glad that this "fair" preference ain't what it used to be.

think most do know about the varied "races" in India, but have a rather crude sense of the north-south dichotomy as being the explanation.

It has been proven that most of the Indians(except probably Sindhis) doesn't belong to different races. You can do some reading (like this one) before writing blatantly. I refuse to take anymore of the Aryan/Dravidian shit theories.

is present in the Bible--references to fairness being equated with beauty are pretty common,

This is the ignorance that I'm talking about. You completely missed the point about how Indians' dark skin can't be equated with a suntan. I'm an avid Bible reader and fair as in "of fair counteance" in Old English simply meant beautiful and since then the meaning has changed to skin color, justice, free, of bias, of sizable amount etc.

The Free Dictionary says
1. Of pleasing appearance, especially because of a pure or fresh quality; comely. [archaic]
2.
a. Light in color, especially blond: fair hair.
b. Of light complexion: fair skin.
3. Free of clouds or storms; clear and sunny: fair skies.
4. Free of blemishes or stains; clean and pure: one's fair name.
5. Promising; likely: We're in a fair way to succeed.

Regarding the Middle East, their light-skin bias is also from Colonialism. There's Pre Islamic and precolonial Arab poetry to praising brown skin, dark hair and dark eyes particularly for Arab Gulf States. Ask an Arab scholar.

fair or dark skin the body is going to decay one day.
The soul will have to take the body of dark or fair skin according to the karma it generates.
Not only that there is no guarantee the soul will take only human birth. it may be the body of
a dog or hog or stool.

So why not attain liberation?
To get away from this non-sense cycle of repeated births and deaths one should get "SARANAGADHI" and
that is possible only in South India. Because great Azwaars and Acharyas took birth there only.

Fair "1. Of pleasing appearance, especially because of a pure or fresh quality; comely. [archaic]"

What comes first? The chicken or the eggs? Until the 20th century, even the English used parasols and sun bonnets. Your examples are sort of proving my point.

"Regarding the Middle East, their light-skin bias is also from Colonialism. There's Pre Islamic and precolonial Arab poetry to praising brown skin, dark hair and dark eyes particularly for Arab Gulf States. Ask an Arab scholar."

I have seen it. The middle east people were far more eclectic about color and did sometimes like "honey" colored skin. Fact is, pale was GENERALLY preferred, at least for women. It's not really even worth arguing. I am recalling some Persians friends singing an old song about a girl with a face like a pale moon. That's pretty light. In fact, there is so much color bias in ancient Persian attitudes and sayings, that it much be due to that Aryan demon.

Colonialism in the middle east? wtf are you talking about? Europeans never settled there in any numbers. Were they that influenced by pictures of Marilyn Monroe? Or Queen Victoria?

Even applied to India, colonialism as an explanation for color preference it makes little sense. The independent Afghans were hardly likely to give a camel-poop what the British admired for looks. The Indians didn't admire British looks particularly. It is pathetic. However we paint ourselves, we are not that much of dupes. Don't kid yourself. We have to take responsibility.
The Ottoman Empire, there was a long history of capturing east Europeans and Greeks, for use as slaves. In the Balkans, Christians were routinely taken from villages and many Janissairies. I met a man from Tunisia who was descended from them. He looked a little like Michael Keaton. Southern Russia provided Circassians for the harems and to judge from photos, they were mostly whities. Arabs certainly had less invested in colorism than other countries, but overall, they can range from white to quite dark, and guess which was more preferred for the ladies.
I'm certainly not apologizing colorism. I'd barely pass the Bollywood test myself, but you delude yourself in blaming all this on Europeans or "others." They were not anybody's aesthetic model years ago. They just used the prejudices already in place when "fair is lovely" was the rule, though there were of course, many connoisseurs of the darker skin.
Also, as has been pointed out, the Indian idea of "fair" is not the "fair" blonde of England, which it really should be if we are that much mind-controlled by those "colonialists" who made up about .0000099% of the total Indian population, at their height, and have been in decline ever since.

You are free to believe the pasties are responsible for all our color woes, but I think it's silly. We need to look in the mirror on this one. Like I said, it ain't what it used to be anyway.

jeez.

The "I have heard aunties associate "kala" with chamars" comment. Point on. Finally something worth sharing thats not part of some bogus conjecture. Well I am an Assamese, with skin that qualifies for white/gold, but slight mongoloid features (North father, NE mother) So I have been treated as an underclass or herrenvolk depending on which part of India I worked/studied in. These very personal experiences became a serious issue for me as I went about dodging and finally confronting the identity crisis that beset me. Just when I was at peace with my situation I would face a racist slur or a deep compliment that would stir the subterranean insecurities I had quelled with a great amount of difficulty. My experience taught me - that the North Indians, the Punjabis in particular are racist in the purest connotation of the word, while the South Indians tend to be racist more out of ignorance than ill will. Over the years I have come to admire my southern compatriots and I have made some of my best friends while on site in the US amongst Tamils and Andhraites at various levels (even second generation ones) If there is any decency that is left in our culture it is a preserve of the Bengal and the Indian South. These Northern Neanderthals find infinite comfort for their insecurities by relating to Whites, even if it places them at the bottom of the White heirarchy. Just watch how these Punjab/Haryanavis make a beeline to immigrate for blue collar jobs, and yet have the most garish claims of patriotism, while the Tamils and the NEs, are "traitors". Bollywood, for some reason lionizes this faux-patriotism and fans their venal belief that they and their gaudy, materialistic and infanticidal culture is at the core of 'Indianness'. If anything, these people are not entirely Indian, they are extracts of Scythian and Hun invasions. They will never be as smart or as traditionally Indian as the Bengali or Tamil Brahmins and will make good second rate Whites at best. If there has to be any movement against color prejudice it must come from Bengal or the South as all movements have in the past, but it will definitely involve trimming down the Northerners to size. Something like Tamil chauvanism (Tamil for the mother tongue!) or Bengali priggishness. Yeah.

KolaNutTechie@105: WTF? How did we go from skin color to a Tam-Bong cabal?

For the upthread discussion on weight and other factors, there are three types of factors:

1. factors that we're evolutionarily biased towards as indicators of good physical and mental health. These include things like optimum weight, a healthy appearance (including a healthy mane of whatever size/shape), or wittiness, or a good emotional quotient.

2. factors that each of us has a preference for as individuals, like hair length or hair twistiness, or the "oriental looks" that someone mentioned. The commonality here is that we're rarely expected by parents or peers to select based on these factors, nor do they dislike a potential child-in-law because of these features.

3. factors that are driven more by social expectations, like skin color, or eye color, or thick lips, or thrusty breasts, or religiosity, or whatever. These are factors that we're "expected" to select for, and it would raise a few eyebrows if we didn't. ("I don't know what he saw in that dark-skinned, flat-chested, idol-worshipping girl")

Individual choices can trump all three types, but it's much easier to overrule Type 3 than Type 1. Some individuals may make a conscious and personal choice to select for skin color, in which case the real debate is over whether skin color is Type 3 or Type 2. But don't conflate it with Type 1: skin color preference is not evolutionary like indicators of health, and changing a skin color preference (if you want to) doesn't require you to fight a billion years of evolution.

Something like Tamil chauvanism (Tamil for the mother tongue!) or Bengali priggishness. Yeah.

"I don't know what he saw in that dark-skinned, flat-chested, idol worshipping girl"-- Best thing I've heard all day. Can absolutely see an Auntie saying that:)

pingpong wrote:

But don't conflate it with Type 1: skin color preference is not evolutionary like indicators of health, and changing a skin color preference (if you want to) doesn't require you to fight a billion years of evolution.

Not necessarily.
According to Razib, light skin among the females of a population is supposed to be an indicator of high estrogen levels, and, by extension, high fertility rates.

The bias for lighter tone also exists in Brazil (also many countries of South America), China, Japan, Korea and most of Asia. I find it really funny when people say that tan look is better. And who decides that ? Western Media or Western Society. Just because tan look is cool in US, it has to be cool in India too? Every society is free to decide their own standards of beauty whatever they may be. Why having anglo-greek features is considered beautiful in US? Why taller is considered better? Why starved skanky girls considered beautiful in Western Society? India does not need to follow each and everything blindly ..

Kola Nut (#106)

These Northern Neanderthals find infinite comfort for their insecurities by relating to Whites, even if it places them at the bottom of the White heirarchy

I don't know why you conflate all of North India with Punjab. This is something that several people from south India have done to me over the years. NIs in desh look at whites as a good source of money for their businesses (this may range from high end businesses to selling several tolas of charas, to simple ripping them off at the Taj Mahal) , amusing touristic specimens, or, shamefully, potentially easy lay. Apart from that, they don't relate much to them one way or the other. As people have mentioned before on this thread, Indian notion of fair is not the caucasian skin colour. It is a lighter shade of brown, possibly a shade of olive.

Just watch how these Punjab/Haryanavis make a beeline to immigrate for blue collar jobs, and yet have the most garish claims of patriotism, while the Tamils and the NEs, are "traitors"

Bollywood, for some reason lionizes this faux-patriotism and fans their venal belief that they and their gaudy, materialistic and infanticidal culture is at the core of 'Indianness'.Something like Tamil chauvanism (Tamil for the mother tongue!) or Bengali priggishness. Yeah.

Pingpong, I most of your category 3 criteria actually fit category 2. Category 3 should actually be caste and religion (and now after new legistlations, gender). Skin colour straddles categories 1, 2 and 3. (For example, a fair girl/boy marrying a rich, successful, dark skinned person from the same caste would be far more acceptable, even welcome, as compared to them marrying a poor, socially disadvantaged dark person of a different caste/religion).

According to Razib, light skin among the females of a population is supposed to be an indicator of high estrogen levels, and, by extension, high fertility rates.

That is BS. There is no evidence that light skinned females are more fertile than dark skinned females.

Why taller is considered better? Why starved skanky girls considered beautiful in Western Society? India does not need to follow each and everything blindly ..

Taller is not considered more beautiful for females. The fetish for females of east asian (chinese, japanese, korean) and southeast asian (vietnamese, filipino, thai, burmese) ancestry is rampant in the West and these females are shorter and darker compared to nordic females.

Also, a fair girl/boy marrying a rich, successful, dark skinned person from the same caste or religion would be far more acceptable, even welcome, as compared to them marrying a poor, socially disadvantaged fair person of a different caste/religion

For example, a fair girl/boy marrying a rich, successful, dark skinned person from the same caste would be far more acceptable, even welcome, as compared to them marrying a poor, socially disadvantaged dark person of a different caste/religion

The upper castes of India are themselves very dark-skinned. The colonial notion that caste is somehow connected to skin color is a falsehood used by the white colonial conquerors to manipulate and subdue the gullible hindu natives, similar to how the europeans manipulated the africans in Rwanda by setting up the taller and "sharper-featured" Tutsis as superior to the shorter, broader-nosed Hutus.

The average low caste sudra and outcaste chamar of Punjab is lighter than the average brahmin. Bollywood is full of sudras like Aishwarya Rai and muslims like all the khan superstars.

Black Godmen dude,
You misread me. I said the same caste, not upper, middle or lower caste.

It felt to me that color prejudice was going down in India, and maybe the only people who still retain it most are those who immigrated the West in the 60's. I don't hear people talking about skin color that much anymore when I go back, at least not in Bombay. My one Bollywood actress cousin is like one of the darkest-complected in the family and noone really uses the abominable "dark but pretty" aphorism that was so common in my mom's or grandmother's time. It's true that noone wanted the pasty skin of the British, but I think having two or three generations grow up without "No Dogs or Indians Allowed" signs has at least subconsciously made some difference .

I feel for all the crap my darker-skinned sisters went through, and color prejudice is ignorant and stupid, but we need to stop hating on ourselves as the most racist ethnicity in the world. It is seriously there in every community. My Persian friends say it's even worse in theirs'- apparently browner-skinned Iranians are mortally offended if they are mistaken for Indian or Latino, and many wanted to riot against "The 300" because they were represented as having dark skin. Some of them occasionally join Stormfront for heavens sake because they are so proud of their "Aryan" blood. Maybe the entire world needs a wakeup call?

Some of them [Persians] occasionally join Stormfront for heavens sake because they are so proud of their "Aryan" blood.

Heh. True, but why look externally when we have homegrown idiots doing the same thing?

Rip 60s (how old are you?)

You seem quite brainwashed yourself. The ancients didn't care about being pale.

"What comes first? The chicken or the eggs? Until the 20th century, even the English used parasols and sun bonnets. Your examples are sort of proving my point. "

Let me break it down for you babe: You mentioned the Bible which takes place in the Middle East. You're confusing the English LANGUAGE with how Bible characters looked. Old English --which is from the Middle Ages --used the word fair IN PLACE OF beautiful. One did not have to be light-skinned to be described as having a "fair countenance." As the English language has evolved words have taken on different meanings and the world fair had nothing to do with skin color originally. Read a different translation of the Bible such as New King James Version and those same texts that used fair in OLD English will read 'lovely or beautiful' in the new.

Lets break it down further: If there were Ethiopian poems describing women as beautiful and if these were translated into Old English the word 'fair' would be substituted in place of beautiful in Amharic. It's simply an older language from a different part of the world (Europe) describing people as attractive in another part of the world (Middle East) using words differently from a different time period. Kapeesh?

"I have seen it. The middle east people were far more eclectic about color and did sometimes like "honey" colored skin. Fact is, pale was GENERALLY preferred, at least for women."

Where's your evidence? As in books. I'd like to see it. Of course light-skinned nations had pride in their ethnic beauty, but so did dark-skinned nations such as India! Btw don't use Persia to represent the whole Middle East. That's why I said ARAB GULF STATES.

"Colonialism in the middle east? wtf are you talking about? Europeans never settled there in any numbers. Were they that influenced by pictures of Marilyn Monroe? Or Queen Victoria?"

Um, apparently so. Hollywood has been digested worldwide. Take a look at Arab and Iranian actors. They're quite European looking. Europeans don't have to settle anywhere in huge numbers for their influence to be felt worldwide including in beauty standards. You're hairsplitting man.

"Even applied to India, colonialism as an explanation for color preference it makes little sense. The independent Afghans were hardly likely to give a camel-poop what the British admired for looks."

Then try today. The British altered how Indians view their own caste system and made Indians internalize their views of race and distorted Indian history such as the Aryan Invasion Myth.

"The Indians didn't admire British looks particularly."

Then what do you call Bollywood being dominated by Anglo Indians, Jews, or light skinned punjabis who could pass as white?Internalized racism doesn't have to be carbon copies of the rulers mainly because they CAN'T look exactly white, but they'll try to get as close as possible.

"In fact, there is so much color bias in ancient Persian attitudes and sayings, that it could be due to that Aryan demon."

See. This is why I say it's Europeans because that Ayran nonsense and other categories was made up BY them, but you're too duped into taking all these constructs for granted that you can't see outside it. I'm through arguing. I'm speaking to a wall.

. "The fetish for females of east asian (chinese, japanese, korean) and southeast asian (vietnamese, filipino, thai, burmese) ancestry is rampant in the West and these females are shorter and darker compared to nordic females."

Such fetishes exist and sometimes it just comes down to strong preferences, so be careful about putting all in some fetish basket. A fetish is obsessive and majes objects of its interests--hence the Indian abhorrence of being described as "exotic." Preferences are just preferences, like you prefer blue over green.
Studies have been done to find out the response of various races to the idea of mating/dating with other races. Indians are about in the middle on that scale, as far as openess to interracial dating. By and large, most people want ideals that exist within their "own kind." East Asian females are the most open to dating interracially, mostly whites. Asian females are pragmatic about marriage and don't actively seek to marry out of their race--they're just adaptable; white men for the most part did not have an Asian-lady obsession (though some certainly do, and tend to be vocal about it), but were just " open" to dating East Asians. Since similar socio-economic situations often obtain for these groups, they get together fairly easily.
But all that aside....skin color and features don't seem to be a bar to attracting love and attention. Most people marry or have significant relationships. Even the losers get lucky sometimes.

However, if you really and truly want to know what are people's deepest preferences in these areas, it's not so much who they date, because personality, and other factors come into play. Offspring--children, not mates or dates, are our genetic expression. Look at whom we would choose if we were buying sperm and/or eggs in a fertility clinic.
That would be educational. Because of my age bracket I've seen that over the years and have done some research.
As far as European and American whites go, the stereotypical preference pans out -- another surpise to me. Eggs/sperm, from tall, healthy blondes with high SATs, do in fact fetch the highest price generally speaking. There are outliers, people who want something entirely different; but always, when looking for what matters to people, follow the money, what people are willing to pay. Or rather what the clinics are willng to pay in response to demand. Supply and demand hold the key to desires.

What other ethnicities are willing to pay for is their own business. How about us?
It's a lot harder to find out what the Indians and East Asians are choosing, but let's just say in the case of Indians it's a pretty easy guess. The donors would have to be stratospherically high-level achievers. We probably demand the higher achieving donors than anywhere else in the world. I'll bet more people than you'd expect would try to match caste, but would rather have it done ahead of time so they don't have to embarrass themselves. Achievement and smarts should be ideally linked to a certain types of looks. All things being equal, and if they have a choice, what do you think would be the preference? Clue? well--let's say the ITT, Aish look-alike graduate who can vault 6 foot fences, could probably sell her genetic material and live comfortably on the proceeds for the rest of her life. Or his--depending on the donor.

Genetic engineering is still mostly sci-fi, but the clones are here and babies with 3 parents are on the horizon. This was sci-fi when I was in school, and likely to be just routine before I'm even ready to retire. When they can choose, people of all types will have to face their demons in ways they don't when there is no choice.
Who knows. Maybe someday we'll be able to turn our skin whatever color we feel like for the day.

Internalized racism doesn't have to be carbon copies of the rulers mainly because they CAN'T look exactly white, but they'll try to get as close as possible.

True dat. This kind of internalized racism so common in India = racial self-loathing.

Albino indians are the closest indians can get to the western ideal of the pinkish blond nordic european look, but even in racially servile
India white albinos remain pariahs, and indians have to settle for the west asian muslim look (swarthy by european standards but very fair in India), which is found in a small minority of indians, as the epitome of "indian" beauty.

Heh. True, but why look externally when we have homegrown idiots doing the same thing?

Awww, I wrote that two years ago. Good times. :) He really was an idiot.

Also, I was told "For such a dark girl, you are actually pretty" last month.

Last.

Month.

The Auntie who bestowed that gift of a compliment came to this country in the 80s, so she was able to move immediately to a city with a full-fledged (not just Desi-- Malayalee) community, which enabled her to stay away from those strange white, black and other people; insulated among her own, nothing and no one challenged the worst of her views.

It saddens me to see such ignorance attributed to the '60s gen/my parents and their peers. Many of them came here alone, lived in barely-diverse places while they went to school (Nebraska, anyone?) and as a result, had to get over cultural baggage very quickly. My father once mentioned how after a few lonely months after he arrived, he was elated to meet a fellow Desi student of Pakistani descent. "It was just nice to see a familiar face." More than fair skin, newly-drawn geographical lines, caste or anything else, he and his friends worried about rent, unfamiliar (and in his case, non-veg) food, and the long periods of time before another aerogram arrived from the other side of the world.Three years later, when he met someone from Mysore, he said it was like one of his own siblings had arrived.

People with back stories like that don't insult my, my mother's, my sister's complexions. More recent arrivals from Fair-and-Lovely-land do. And when I wasn't around other Malayalees, I had Punjabi Aunties in NorCal to do the insulting, instead (most notably during college, while I was working as a teller in Fremont-- I could write a whole other post, because the assumption they carried was that my parents weren't from India-- I was too dark). I'm glad that people in Mumbai are over it. Too many of their counterparts here are not.

let's just say in the case of Indians it's a pretty easy guess. The donors would have to be stratospherically high-level achievers. We probably demand the higher achieving donors than anywhere else in the world. I'll bet more people than you'd expect would try to match caste, but would rather have it done ahead of time so they don't have to embarrass themselves. Achievement and smarts should be ideally linked to a certain types of looks. All things being equal, and if they have a choice, what do you think would be the preference? Clue? well--let's say the ITT, Aish look-alike graduate who can vault 6 foot fences, could probably sell her genetic material and live comfortably on the proceeds for the rest of her life. Or his--depending on the donor.

You are writing a lot of confused nonsense. Try a reality check: hindus are not "embarrassed" at all to insist on a mate from the same sub-caste (caste is too broad for these inbreds); Light-eyed Aish is low caste south indian; ITT graduates usually tend to be dark-skinned; vaulting or any other athletic skills are not in demand in the indian mating market; blond sperm donors should be preferable to what passes for "fair" in India if you want your kids not to look as dark and indian as you.......

Not confused Black Godmen, just getting sleepy. Shouldn't you include Blue Godmen, btw?
I have not been back to India since the early 70s, mostly through choice.
So let our fantasy egg-donor Aish ITT grad be high caste, with the brains of Srinivasa Ramanujan. Indians don't do pole vaulting? Damn.
But you see, this a hypothetical egg donor whose recipient couple are relocating from Mumbai to Los Angeles, ok?

My point remains. It has to do with supply and demand in fertility clinics telling us something about peoples' deepest desires and biases.

"You are writing a lot of confused nonsense. Try a reality check..."

Haha! Black Godmen I love you! Btw are you Indian? I'm just curious. I find a lot of SM posters are apologists for this revolting "preference," but you're a breath of fresh air!

I find a lot of SM posters are apologists for this revolting "preference," but you're a breath of fresh air!

A lot?

The vast majority of our commenters and lurkers think such unexamined "preferences" are revolting, too. I haven't read every comment left on this site over the past five years, but I've read more of them than most people, so I'll vouch for "a lot of SM posters" because they are NOT apologists for colorism.

Finally, as one might expect, this thread is taking a turn for the worse-- please try to respond to each other without being uncivil if you want this space to remain available for unpacking this always controversial, always sensitive issue. It's great if you know more about topic A or B, but there's no need to insult people while you're responding to them. Capiche?

People with back stories like that don't insult my, my mother's, my sister's complexions. More recent arrivals from Fair-and-Lovely-land do. And when I wasn't around other Malayalees, I had Punjabi Aunties in NorCal to do the insulting, instead (most notably during college, while I was working as a teller in Fremont-- I could write a whole other post, because the assumption they carried was that my parents weren't from India-- I was too dark). I'm glad that people in Mumbai are over it. Too many of their counterparts here are not.

Except people in Mumbai obviously aren't over it... just look at Bollywood. People like Katrina Kaif and Neil Nitin Mukesh are leading 'stars.' Or southern film... actresses like Trisha and Nayantara are obviously south Indian, but very few Indian, let alone south Indian women, are as light-skinned as they are.

I get my darkness commented on more when I am in India than when I am in America. There it's just a topic of conversation. I try not to get my panties in a bunch over it, although it is annoying to have your relatives apparently talking about how dark you got since the last time you visited, when you're not even there. Generalizations about India or the Indian-American community really don't hold much weight (except this one of course ;) ).

Also, I get MANY more comments along the lines of 'you have such a pretty face, you just need to lose weight' than I do about skin color. I think that's more common now than commenting on skin color is, at least based on what I've seen.

I get annoyed by other desis judging me for not wanting to stay in the sun too long though. I think it's a very personal and sensitive matter to most people though..

Black Godmen = Prema

Hey Old Monk. I am not conflating North Indian with Punjabi, having lived in Delhi, I can tell the Punjabis/Haryanavis apart and where they come together. This is an interesting observation on Delhi by Rana Dasgupta: www.granta.com/Magazine/107/Capital-Gains/1 and I don't think you can spell Delhi without Punjabi. And where were the black IPL cheerleaders told they weren't white enough - was it Chandigarh? And Kerala is unusual in many ways, it is a microcosm of India, with sharp ethnic and religious divisions complicated by glut of gulf money, so you will find the state has the same problems that the India does on the whole. But if you want to discover the old benign Indian culture that values frugality, tolerance and balances it with a conscientious pursuit of materialism visit Bangalore/Chennai/Hyderabad. Thats how India should strive to be.

I'd like to draw everybody's attention to the post 96 by saxon:

"Well said raj. These are the wisest words ever written, homie. Indians should stop whining over the losing hand dealt by God and begin the process of introspection. Ask yourselves why? Why are indians so dark-skinned and unattractive? The answer is obvious if you are wise: bad karma."

What exactly does this mean? Saxon care to elaborate what you meant here?

KolaNutTechie: your comments on this thread are disturbing at best, bigoted at worst. Consider this your final warning.

Commenter tbh: stop looking for and complaining about what isn't there.

Commenter Taye_Diggs_Is_Superfine: He was being sarcastic.

Some of you are engaging in trollish behavior. Stop it.

SM Intern,

I've heard that term before. What is exactly trollish behavior?

SM Intern wrote:

Some of you are engaging in trollish behavior. Stop it.

Guys, you might want to be careful.
You could get banned without any warning whatsoever (like I was).

Dear Friends

Color preferences have been alway there and will always. Even in pre colonial Africa, lighter shades were preferred. That in itself has not been an issue in those times

But today it has become polarizing because

1. we live in a much more multicultural mix than before and worse the trend is towards uniformity towards the dominant/culture. Throw in the unrelenting media focus, which means that 24/7 we are reminded/fixated on our shortcoming in this context color.

Hark back a few centuries back or go to Africa say Niger.. people there won't be talking so much about color since most would be of same color. That is why the psychology of the Black or African American is more affected due to the constant deluge of media/non-white peers et al compared to that the Black or African living in Africa.

The times we live make these differences sharper and more painful.

Color preferences may not change, but we can certainly make people more sensitive about making disparaging comments, humiliating, media behaviour (especially advertisements etc) America has come a long way in color/racial sensitivity due the peculiarities of its history, but the others countries are far behind.

And Anna 39, Kolatechnic (39)does say some umpleasant truths, I don't if he should be published. If we can talk of caste, brahmins, women issues freely, why not region stuff. Burying will not make it go away.

But picking on Punjabi's may not be the right thing. Every body who is very fair, behaves in similar manner. There Tamil brahmins who are fair but may be used to many darkskinned brethren as well, hence their tolerance level is higher. But within a same family you will see different levels of skin tone and discrimination as well.

These issues as mentioned earlier are in sharper focus due to movement of people away from their native environment, media (newspaper/TV/radio) et al. There is no total cure for this.. .Education for sensitivity towards such can go a long way though.

But to shout from rooftops -- dark skin is beuatiful is at best self delusional.

Raj

Sorry -- what I meant is opposite of what got typed! It should be

"I don't know if he should be punished and not published!!!!"

>And Anna 39, Kolatechnic (39)does say some umpleasant truths, I don't if he should be >published. If we can talk of caste, brahmins, women issues freely, why not region stuff. ?Burying will not make it go away.

Phillygrrl, I love you forever for writing this.

I hate the dark skin prejudice among South Asian. My great-grandmother back in India repeatedly tells me in Telugu that I'll never get married because I'm dark, and she keeps at it even when I tell her I love my dark skin, and that I don't want a stupid Indian boy if he is racist about dark skin.

@Lata (#57): Anchal Joseph is one of the most beautiful models to ever appear on "America's Next Top Model." And she's dark-skinned. Trust me, if you have a great personality and look anything like Anchal Joseph, any sane guy with good eyesight, desi or non-desi, would be proud to have you as his wife.

Saxon

Where I equate black with ugly? That logic would be akin to sayingall short/fat.. people are ugly!

BTW: there are many topnotch actresses in bollywood who are relatively dark. Or none of them are lily white -- Kajol, Priyanka Chopra, Kareen Kapur, Rani Mukherjee, Mallika Sherawat etc.

Beauty has various aspects to it. Color is only one but not all.

saxon: Well said raj. All Indians should accept the fact that they are ugly because they are dark, as most indians already do.

roflmao thats not what all the naughty white girls are saying....
they really like daaark because real daaark = real biiig where it matters ;)

tongue or wallet, nash?

i would like to add my voice to the outrage over color preference here. i really hate it when my relatives compliment my skin tone. as a kid, auntijis were constantly coming up to me at the BSOU and asking me to meet their daughter. i knew they were thinking about light complexioned grand-kids and i wanted nothing to do with it so i just jumped in my s-class and sped away. it not just Indians, even when i went to school up in cambridge, MA Americans would ask me if i were Greek or Italian. i was so disgusted i wanted to throw my size 12 shoes at them but in my profession i took an oath of Primum non nocere.

"Trust me, if you have a great personality and look anything like Anchal Joseph"

whats with the belated claim of "a great personality"

"Except people in Mumbai obviously aren't over it... just look at Bollywood. People like Katrina Kaif and Neil Nitin Mukesh are leading 'stars.' Or southern film... actresses like Trisha and Nayantara are obviously south Indian, but very few Indian, let alone south Indian women, are as light-skinned as they are."

I wouldn't use Bollywood as a baseline. You can do amazing things to skin tone in postproduction. Most Bollywood stars are waaaaay darker than they appear onscreen.

India is mainly a nation of dark skinned people. But they like fair skinned politicians, bollywood actors, daughter in laws.

Do you know for eg, light complexioned politicians (think Rahul, Priyanka, Sonia), have a huge advantage over dark skinned politicians. The nature of the majority of human beings is such that they think emotionally more than logically. This quality is exploitable and is well advantage of all. both by the fair and dark. I am just stating the facts. Nothing to do with karma, or caste, it is just human emotion.

Did fair skin bring in the voters?
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/India/Did-fair-skin-bring-in-the-voters/articleshow/4558057.cms

On another note Ebony magazine of African Americans is full of part lightly tanned African Americans. No one has forced them to do it, but apparently even before colonial times, there has been a preference for lighter tan in traditional africa. The goes in other parts of the world .. China, Europe, Japan etc.

I don't understand how some people concluded: "All prefer light". I am very light skinned but have always and always will have a pathological obsession with dusky girls. I loathe my skin that is too fair for a guy and want a dusky woman (coffee colored, not coffee bean colored but definitely coffee colored) It may sound strange, but I have always been clear about my preference. So I find it very hard to believe that a lighter skinned mate can be a universal preference. There must be others like me. Yes but its true I am not neurotypical, am a man of only moderate sexual energy, and of good tastes. I would pick an average looking, dusky girl with smarts over a wheatish Indian any day. Also darker girls tend to be smart and independent, because of their proclivity towards introversion, which is what I prefer, as stuff lasts for a few moments but pillow talk can go on all night ;-)

Sorry there is vodka in my veins so my grammAr gone for a toss. But I readlly do mean it about dusky girls, I am thinking about them right now.

I wouldn't use Bollywood as a baseline. You can do amazing things to skin tone in postproduction. Most Bollywood stars are waaaaay darker than they appear onscreen.

Right, but the point is that light skin is still being held up as the beautiful ideal by people who live in Mumbai. India has not, in fact, come 'ages' ahead of the diaspora, as someone said upthread.

Hee Manju, I was going to write much the same thing.

 
On Sanjaya Malakar

Sanjaya's dark good looks has kept him in the fame because all of the tweens are in love with him. He is very nice looking!
 
Okay, starting with the simple: Sanjaya is a cute, good-looking boy. Some of the other contestants are very talented but not so cute. He is thin, has golden brown skin, white teeth (usually held in a big happy smile), and beautiful lush hair.
 
I love Sanjaya and would love him to win! He looks a bit like a young Donny Osmond with very brown skin.
 
I think he is gorgeous (ESPECIALLY with his hair pulled back under that hat with the hat tipped forward showing his near perfect pearly whites against that luscious dark skin..
 
He was gold Tuesday with a sultry, restrained version of the classic "besame mucho," fixing his big brown eyes on the camera as he smartly stuck to the simple vocal line.
all the while the camera zoomed in on a tight shot of those big brown eyes...and all I could think of was Antonio Banderas as the Kitty in Shrek 2.
 
That is such a beautiful song, and Sanjaya interpreted it PERFECTLY! I sat transfixed during his entire performance, held a willing captive by his one-of-a-kind voice and his big, gorgeous brown eyes! I
 
Asian Indian descent and has more hair flopping above his incredibly dark eye brows than Barry Gibb has on his entire body.

Sing, who cares, these girls probably have the sound off while swooning over his big brown eyes and luscious locks.
 
From various sources on the web.

On another note Ebony magazine of African Americans is full of part lightly tanned African Americans. No one has forced them to do it, but apparently even before colonial times, there has been a preference for lighter tan in traditional africa.

This is hogwash. Where did you get that from? I could get books that state the opposite. I've read Ebony magazine plenty of times and I don't know what you're talking about here. Perhaps you're unaware of how diverse Black Americans are.

Color preferences have been always there and will always. Even in pre colonial Africa, lighter shades were preferred. That in itself has not been an issue in those times

Frankly this is racist/colorist. There's no way that only lighter skin has been favored for most cultures for all of world history. Simply because nothing remains constant over time. Dark skin (or the natural complexion of that nation)was strongly valued in most cultures simply because most people are brown and civilizations are ethnocentric and like self. Therefore, civilizations' beauty standards originally supported their natural features--at least in skin color. Only subjugation or invastion would override this which of course has happened.

Raj appears to take this light-skin stuff for granted and is projecting it for all time.

Can someone look into Saxon's postings ... all indications of trolling and flaming. I am surprised moderators have been sleeping so long.

149 · saxon
137 · saxon
96 · saxon

Beauty has various aspects to it. Color is only one but not all.

Correction: color has nothing to do with beauty. This is a hair's breath away from saying that certain races are more beautiful than others. Skin color is hereditary and to say that dark-skin, or eye color, or hair texture have anything to do with beauty itself is a slippery slope. Because where do you draw the line?

Another thing, I'm tired of the people who argue that light-skin preference isn't a big deal and of course have a right to their own opinion, equating dark-skin with obesity or shortness to prove a point. Which is they have no point. Obesity is a health concern. Being short isn't exaclty a flaw but if one is dragging dark-skin down to being fat, stunted growth, baldness or aging just to make colorism appear less heinous or to make fatness a valid qualifier for beauty is extreme logic. There is a balance to truth folks.

As a dark-skinned person, I know I'm not alone at being offened at these comparisons. I wonder if raj is light-skinned which explains his slight indifference and insistance that light skin was always deemed superior worldwide. Or perhaps he's dark-skinned and favors lighter women and wants to justify his "preference." Regardless, debate is open but these comparisons are cutting it a little close.

No Raj,

It's you who's the troll. Saxon is being sarcastic and his sarcasm is showing how offensive your statements come across.

Can someone look into Saxon's postings ... all indications of trolling and flaming.

Raj, raj, I am on your side homie. How can you not see that? How can you call me a troll for agreeing with you that dark=ugly, always and everywhere? Is it flaming to call you the wisest poster here?

Sanjaya's dark good looks has kept him in the fame because all of the tweens are in love with him. He is very nice looking!

Uh oh. Please don't go PC on us raj. Sanjaya is too indian looking to be good looking. It is delusional, as you wrote earlier, to think darkies can be attractive.

Gem
As far as ebony magazine is concerned their advertisements showed preference for mixed race. I hear, like other print magazines it is in trouble.

As far as precolonial African preferences are concerned have a look.

http://evoandproud.blogspot.com/2006/12/skin-color-preference-in-sub-saharan.html

But beauty does not fully determine mate preference, just as mate preference does not fully determine actual mate choice.

I've seen that nonsense. If I ever get my hands on those books I'll look into it. But meanwhile check this link out. 6th paragraph.

As far as ebony magazine is concerned their advertisements showed preference for mixed race. I hear, like other print magazines it is in trouble.

No it doesn't! I just flipped through an issue of Ebony at the library!

gem wrote:

But meanwhile check this link out. 6th paragraph.

gem, I think you're referring to the following passage:

"The children born here are black enough; but the blacker they are the more they are thought of; wherefore from the day of their birth their parents do rub them every week with oil of sesame, so that they become black as devils. Moreover, they make their gods black and their devils white, and the images of their saints they do paint black all over."

- Marco Polo (1254 - 1324) writing about people in and around present day Mylapur in chennai.(From The Travels of Marco Polo, The complete Yule-Cordier edition, Pg. 355)

Saxon

you are not up against me. You are up against the world. Go face it.

Here is something interesting:

"Traditionally, Hindusim has never shown a preference for skin colour and dark skinned people can be found in all castes of Hindu society. In the Mahabharata, the character Draupadi, or otherwise known as Krishnaa was of dark complexion but was an epitome of beauty. The incarnation of Vishnu, Krishna himself (widely revered by Vaishnavites), was said to be "as black as a full raincloud".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colorism

Can someone articulate more clearly for me the "level" of issue this colorism in desi culture holds? I'm of two minds--one the one hand, yes, colorism is bad--why put these artificial divides up among people? On the other hand, the actual issue of color in my family would come up way under (i.e., less important than) education and professional status, religion, family wealth and status/connections, nationality-status, height/fitness, in terms of a marriage match. So, it seems kind of small-bore in term of actual effect compared to those factors.

Time to close the thread, perhaps? It's long since changed from a dispassionate analysis of color perception and a skewering of prejudice into an endorsement and defense of it.

It may be human to have unconscious biases, but it also makes us more human to recognize them, confront them, and overcome them. An abject submission to them is not helpful.

It may be human to have unconscious biases, but it also makes us more human to recognize them, confront them, and overcome them.

Can you say more about that? I think it's important not to harm others. Am I harming others when I want my sister to marry an educated man, as opposed to an uneducated man?

Jitendra

Ping Pong (62) means we should have no preferences .. be it colour, height, race, age, sex, species, language, religion, education, attitude et al.

Anybody who reads the threads has to come to that conclusion.

Excellent post!

My parents watch copious amounts of SunTV, and there was an ad for some sort of soap recently that really upset me. Basically, a preteen girl is about to take a bath, and her mother is frantic she'll use the wrong soap, end up with a bad complexion, lose all self-esteem and thereby become a complete failure at life. It made me more sad than angry, I think. (SunTV is six hundred kinds of wrong in other ways, but this was just advertising).

Why is it that a woman's complexion is so important when a man's face can look like a moon crater, but have no consequence to either his self-esteem or his future success?

Why is it that a woman's complexion is so important when a man's face can look like a moon crater, but have no consequence to either his self-esteem or his future success?

a mans height is sort of the same way...

tongue or wallet, Puli?

Hitler was light skinned.

a mans height is sort of the same way...

Fair enough. But I still think there is a degree of difference in the practical effect of dark skin vs. short height. A short man may have some negative experiences associated with his height, but it doesn't get the same amount of attention as a woman with dark skin, IMO. Partly, this is because the short man can't really do anything to change his condition. But the dark-skinned woman is expected to alter her natural complexion in order to be successful.

Or maybe I'll just shut up now.

Fair enough.

heh

Am I harming others when I want my sister to marry an educated man,

Quit your strawman-building. My comment wasn't aimed at you, so I don't know why you're taking needless offense. And anyway, if you "want your sister to marry" a certain type of person, you come across as a big-brother-knows-best paternalist. (Couldn't you have just as easily said "I want to marry an educated person" instead? Why project it onto someone else?)

If my earlier point wasn't clear, I was saying that we all have prejudices: some of them for evolutionary reasons, some from social pressure, and some from personal idiosyncrasies or fetishes. We can choose (or not) to overcome each prejudice that we identify, with whatever priority we wish to assign, and some of them will take more effort than others. That's what personal growth is all about -- it's about being less-than-ideal and striving to become better. Your question really was about what priority we should assign to one of these prejudices (skin color) vs others (education and wealth and stuff), and I have no particular preference -- do what you're comfortable with for yourself. You weren't denying that they're prejudices of some sort and I wasn't saying that you were defending one of them by propping it up with others.

What I do object to is the attitude exemplified by raj in comments 64, 133, 142 and 163, that since we will never be fully free of prejudice, therefore we shouldn't even make the effort to confront one of them, and continue to wallow in the fetid pool of the biases that were handed down to us. Comment 163, had it been said 100 years back, could have been used to justify any of a host of prejudices, including some that we've collectively rejected today. If raj has a preference for pale skin, that's his personal prerogative and it reflects on his attitudes than on anyone else, but he's flat out wrong in projecting it as static, immutable, and above all "natural", which is what his earlier comments have stated, and which is bull. If raj is incapable of getting over a skin color fixation, it's nobody's problem but his own.

Hitler was light skinned.

Great pity that he wasn't lightly skinned instead.

India is mainly a nation of dark skinned people. But they like fair skinned politicians, bollywood actors, daughter in laws.

While India has predominance of light-skin people in Bollywood, US has predominance of blonde, blue-eyed people in Hollywood or on television, and neither is good. It is also well known how extensively media in US covers the missing reports of blonde-blue eye people compared to completely ignoring similar plights of people with different looks.

Does sunscreen keep people from getting darker? I thought it just protected you from getting burned?

So sad. But I always remember Tagore's poem Krishnakali and think in some families it must be different:

In the village they call her the dark girl
but to me she is the flower Krishnakali
On a cloudy day in a field
I saw the dark girl's dark gazelle-eyes.
She had no covering on her head,
her loose hair had fallen on her back.

Dark? However dark she be,
I have seen her dark gazelleeyes.

Two black cows were lowing,
as it grew dark under the heavy clouds.
So with anxious, hurried steps,
the dark girl came from her hut.
Raising her eyebrows toward the sky,
she listened a moment to the clouds' rumble.

Dark? However dark she be,
I have seen her dark gazelle-eyes.

A gust of the east wind
rippled the rice plants.
I was standing by a ridge,
alone in the field.
Whether or not she looked at me
Is known only to us two.

Dark? However dark she be,
I have seen her dark gazelle-eyes.

This how the Kohldark cloud
rises in the northeast in Jaistha;
the soft dark shadow
descends on the Tamal grove in Asharh;
and sudden delight floods the heart
in the night of Sravan.

Dark? However dark she be,
I have seen her dark gazelle-eyes.

To me she is the flower Krishnakali,
whatever she may be called by others.
In a field in Maynapara village
I saw the dark girl's dark gazelle-eyes.
She did not cover her head,
not having the time to feel embarrassed.

Dark? However dark she be,
I have seen her dark gazelle-eyes.

-- Rabindranath Tagore

so much angst over so little. Dark people want to be lighter. Pale people go to tanning salons. same thing.

Thanks for that elaboration TTCUSM! Do you have the book? It would have been interesting to know what Marco Polo would have found had he went further inland. Btw, what does TTCUSM stand for?