I’m not sure if it’s the summer sun coming out and shining its bright UV rays or not, but I’ve noticed quite a bit of attention lately on the attempts of women of colour to become or remain fair skinned. To be fair (no pun intended), this is not a new phenomenon by any stretch of the imagination. As a South Asian woman, I’ve been exposed to this obsession my whole life. Whether it was warnings of not too getting dark in the summer sun or hearing girls described as “pretty but dark,” the message that dark is ugly has become ingrained in my mind. Every time I go to Pakistan, I am always shocked by the commercials, ads, and billboards pushing some skin lightening cream or another, all meant to miraculously change a woman’s life. Here is just one disturbing commercial from India (which has a counterpart in Thailand too).

Whether in India, Nigeria, the Middle East, or Canada it seems women of colour have been obsessed with fair skin. However, such obsessions are not without their critics, and as people have begun to critically analyse the reasons behind and implications of this obsession, so have people started to rethink their attitudes. Recently, Indian-British model Gia Johnson Singh spoke out against the prejudice against dark skinned Indian women.

Johnson Singh, who says her own skin tone varies from very light to very dark when she spends time in the sun, encountered colour prejudice first hand…“I heard someone talk about me on the phone saying ‘Oh, but she’s really dark’. It really got my back up,” she said.

The article continues to discuss the prejudices faced by dark skinned women in India, though it would have been useful to highlight a movement in India to eliminate these prejudicial views. Additionally, earlier this month, Sunny Hundal of The Guardian discussed the very serious dangers of the skin whitening creams used by so many around the world.

Having said all this, one must wonder why it is that we see an almost universal desire for fair, if not very white, skin in parts of the world where the majority of people are of colour.  After all, these regions of the world are dispersed around the globe and have vastly different cultures.  What is it that they have in common? The answer to that, as one will hear among the critics of such colourist practices, is that these countries and their people were all colonized at some point in history by Europeans. During the colonization periods, which spanned hundreds of years for some, the European colonizers made it explicitly clear that their white skin was superior to the colour of the people whose land they invaded and colonized.

However, the story did not end with the end of European colonization. After all, hundreds of years of brainwashing will leave a scar or two. These populations became so convinced of their own inferiority that they internalized the racism and continue it, in the form of colourism, today. Nonetheless, it does indeed occur to me that it is high time we discard such beliefs and begin to accept ourselves as we recognize the colonialist roots of our self hate. But this is easier said than done.

Today, in the form of American entertainment, we see numerous racist images being projected not only in our own homes and theatres, but exported all over the globe. (See Racialicious for some excellent race analyses of pop culture.) The majority of Hollywood films, the majority of television shows, the majority of music videos depict a certain white beauty standard. (I won’t even get into the size issues American media is exporting around the globe.) A standard that I, as an avid Bollywood watcher, have seen infiltrate Bollywood beauties. Last year, CBC relayed that more and more Indian women are going under the knife to look more white. As one plastic surgery candidate states:

“We ape the West,” says Susie. “We were ruled for 200 years by white people so it shows that a certain amount of power came with being white. White is beautiful. And beauty is power, right?”

Although there has been a disturbing increase in women around the world trying to look more white there are also movements around the world that are trying to counter this self-hating epidemic. As the aforementioned CBC article states, there are media personalities who are actively depicting images of beautiful, dark-skinned women. Bollywood has among it’s more popular actresses dark-skinned women. But we, as viewers of the most influential media in the world, must also demand more diverse depictions of beauty, not only in size but also in colour and ethnicities. We must be critically aware of the ways in which people of various colours are depicted and the messages such depictions may be sending. There is no quick solution to this problem, and those who buy into this myth must change their views, but by challenging the problematic images in the media we can all aid in the process.

Related posts:

1. Implanting Empowerment?: Cosmetic Surgery, Beauty Culture, and the Paradox of Choice
2. Sideway Glances
3. Forgotten Sisters: Canada’s Silent Epidemic