Everybody wants to look good and beautiful. In India especially this is considered to be true only when a woman is fair skinned. All through my childhood I did not spend much time thinking about this as my family is more or less fair skinned but the tremendous impact made by this attitude of our society in general became prominent after college. One of my best friends is dusky skinned and she was always experimenting with one fairness cream after another. After 3-4 years of constant use and experimentation, she had a face full of pimple marks and black spots left behind by the heavy chemicals used in all those creams. She had to shell out a lot of money to go to a dermatologist and get all kinds of crucial treatments for months afterwards. Even after this, her quest for fairness did not end. Right after college, her family started searching for boys for her marriage and she got a portfolio done to show to the boys' families. In each picture, her skin color was enhanced by at least 2 shades so as to present a fair skin to the other side! She is beautiful anyway but to see this kind of blatant trickery was beyond my understanding. Her simple answer was that no boy wants to marry a dark skinned girl and this is the normal trick employed by all families when going for arranged marriages!
I started looking at all fairness cream ads and matrimonial columns much more carefully after that. Truly, all of the ads point at just one thing.
'' Use this fairness cream and you will never have to worry about getting a good boy! Not only that, you will also get a good job, everyone will love you, kids will smile when you walk by, your mother-in-law will love you, your parents will be proud of you! ''
The ads look ridiculous as they always employ models or actors who are already fair. None of them have the courage to show a naturally dusky skinned actor and actually show the effect of this cream on their skin over a period of time. Many times newspaper articles have reported how some of these creams contain such powerful chemicals that they are banned in many countries! Some of them even contain some hormones that mess up with our bodies! Some of them burn our skin beyond repair. Some of them enter our bloodstream and make us weak from inside. But still people continue to use them!
It is because of the matrimonial ads. Pick any paper and browse through these ads. They invariably start with 'Wanted FAIR, Tall, Slim, Beautiful girl for....'' At least 90 ads out of 100 will start with these words only. It is a cruel irony that in our country Lord Krishna can be dusky skinned but his Radha is always fair skinned. All the education, progression and modernity hasn't been able to take this attitude out of our minds that a fair girl is the most beautiful girl automatically. The personality of a girl, her talent, her nature, her behavior, everything is secondary and the most important thing is she should be FAIR and BEAUTIFUL. No wonder that we have so many different brands of fairness creams and lotions selling like hot cakes.
Nobody is willing to even think for a moment that if a girl is born with a particular skin color, why is she punished for that? Why is she forced to grow up in a society where she will always feel inferior? Why is the sole motive of her existence forced to be to marry off a good boy and settle down for which it is important she should look fair? Why, in a country of majority dusky skinned people, we ourselves have created such barriers for each other? The sheer inhumanity of this situation stuns me!
This blog post is inspired by the blogging marathon hosted on IndiBlogger for the launch of the #Fantastico Zica from Tata Motors. You can apply for a test drive of the hatchback Zica today.I started looking at all fairness cream ads and matrimonial columns much more carefully after that. Truly, all of the ads point at just one thing.
'' Use this fairness cream and you will never have to worry about getting a good boy! Not only that, you will also get a good job, everyone will love you, kids will smile when you walk by, your mother-in-law will love you, your parents will be proud of you! ''
The ads look ridiculous as they always employ models or actors who are already fair. None of them have the courage to show a naturally dusky skinned actor and actually show the effect of this cream on their skin over a period of time. Many times newspaper articles have reported how some of these creams contain such powerful chemicals that they are banned in many countries! Some of them even contain some hormones that mess up with our bodies! Some of them burn our skin beyond repair. Some of them enter our bloodstream and make us weak from inside. But still people continue to use them!
It is because of the matrimonial ads. Pick any paper and browse through these ads. They invariably start with 'Wanted FAIR, Tall, Slim, Beautiful girl for....'' At least 90 ads out of 100 will start with these words only. It is a cruel irony that in our country Lord Krishna can be dusky skinned but his Radha is always fair skinned. All the education, progression and modernity hasn't been able to take this attitude out of our minds that a fair girl is the most beautiful girl automatically. The personality of a girl, her talent, her nature, her behavior, everything is secondary and the most important thing is she should be FAIR and BEAUTIFUL. No wonder that we have so many different brands of fairness creams and lotions selling like hot cakes.
Nobody is willing to even think for a moment that if a girl is born with a particular skin color, why is she punished for that? Why is she forced to grow up in a society where she will always feel inferior? Why is the sole motive of her existence forced to be to marry off a good boy and settle down for which it is important she should look fair? Why, in a country of majority dusky skinned people, we ourselves have created such barriers for each other? The sheer inhumanity of this situation stuns me!
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