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Indian women and white obsession: Imported Western Culture

Tanupriya Khurana stared at her sister Bhavna whitening her skin at a cosmetic shop in New Delhi’s most famous shopping mall. Bhavna’s cheeks flushed red. She lifted the mirror up and looked at the results.

More and more Indian women are looking to beauty salons with the desire to have a white skin. Photo: CNN

Behind the shop, a women’s clothing and lingerie store was displaying the trendiest models on mannequins with blonde hair, blue eyes, and milky skin. They don’t look like Khurana and her sister or the hundreds of other Indian girls roaming this huge shopping mall Sunday afternoon.

Even billboards featuring Indians are complete strangers: long, straight, silky hair, tall, slim bodies, and most importantly, a light skin tone. The most famous Bollywood stars like Aishwarya Rai, a former Miss World, are also whiter than the average Indian.



Aishwarya Rai

Obsessions

“White skin is preferred,” said Khurana, 23, an insurance broker. “There’s a different mentality here. I think Indian women have a conceptual problem. They think white skin is beautiful.”

She disagreed with the opinion of this majority. But she was right. Skin color has long been a big concern of Indian women.

Many Indians feel a terrible obsession with white skin, which has been growing in recent years, as US and European retail cosmetics brands race to land in this market, and Access to information via the Internet has also expanded.

This issue was further heated after Nina Davaluri, a woman of Indian origin, won the Miss America crown. Many Indians wonder, can a dark-skinned person like Davaluri win the top spot in a beauty pageant in this country?



Nina Davaluri, Miss America, is of Indian descent. Photo: Salon

Pratima Singh, a makeup artist for Khurana’s sister, said she often meets customers who choose foundation or powder that is too white. “They said they wanted to look like her,” Singh pointed to a large billboard with a picture of a white girl. “But you can’t cover up what you have”.

Khurana agrees with this view. “It’s the saddest thing in our country,” she said as her sister “transformed” into a beautiful Bollywood actress. “Looks or skin color, we shouldn’t pay too much attention to such things.”

However, even those who do not dispute the crown of Miss America also believe that when someone considers her to be a daughter-in-law, Davaluri will still be disqualified because of her skin color, no matter how beautiful she is. .



That’s the truth exposed in the commercials for marriage brokers. “Finding a beautiful, tall and white lover…” is the content often seen in the ads that many young Indians choose.

Skin whitening cosmetics

As a result, unlit women in India quickly became the target of a $400 million skin-whitening industry. This industry boomed many years ago, with a product called Fair & Lovely.

However, not all women can afford to buy Fair & Lovely. They have many other products with more affordable prices to choose from. There is even a feminine hygiene product that is advertised as fresh, safe and, of course, whitening.

In Kolkata, a cosmetics store sells a wide range of skin creams. Jayasree Sarkar, an employee of the store, says whitening products are the most popular. Although they cannot make female customers white in just a week, they still buy because they believe they will have a chance.



Their hopes were rekindled when Bollywood superstars like Shah Rukh Khan, a black actor, sold Emani cosmetics’ Fair & Handsome cream. Khan says he owes his success to using this cream.

Actor Shah Rukh Khan was criticized for advertising skin whitening cream. Photo: Pinimg.

“Charming Black”

Pria Warrick, a former Miss India, thinks that Indians are still trying to get ahead of their colonial past. “We’re obsessed with white skin. I think that’s the legacy of the British colonization,” she said.

Warrick believes that India needs someone like American TV queen Oprah Winfrey to do for the women of this country what she has done for black women in America, making them proud of their culture and appearance. She also believes that it is the penetration of American culture that has caused Indian society to pay too much attention to formal beauty.



Actress Nandita Das and the “Black Charming” campaign. Photo: afshan-shaik

However, there are Indians who are also trying to turn the tide and actress Nandita Das is one of them. She decided to be the face of the “Black Charming” campaign to make a difference.

Jai Shukla, a 31-year-old ᴍᴀɴ, thinks it is shameful for Indians to discriminate against their own skin color. “I think mentally, we’re not free,” he said, admitting that he’s also tried to lighten his chocolate complexion.

Shukla used to teach Hindi to Westerners at a luxury hotel in New Delhi. Sometimes, the security guard here mistook him for a worker, just because of his dark skin tone. He tried to use skin lightening cream but decided to give it up when he started to feel more confident about himself.



Freida Pinto and many Indian female stars are victims of racism. Photo: WWD.

Rajat Tyagi, 28, named actresses whom he considers idealistic, including Kate Winslett, Angelina Jolie and Indian actress Katrina Kaif, who has light skin tone. However, Tyagi objected to putting too much emphasis on skin color. He said when deciding to marry someone, he wouldn’t care whether she was white, brown or black.

There is no guarantee that Tyagi’s words are true, especially in the context that the skin-whitening cosmetics market in India is as vibrant as it is now, but it is also a signal worth celebrating.