Fair Skin Tone As a Beauty Ideal: Colorism in India
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Fair Skin Tone as a Beauty Ideal: Colorism in India Masterarbeit im Ein-Fach-Masterstudiengang English and American Literatures, Cultures and Media der Philosophischen Fakultät der Christian-Albrechts-Universität zu Kiel vorgelegt von Sidra Umer Erstgutachter: Prof. Dr. Christian Huck Zweitgutachter: Dr. Dennis Büscher-Ulbrich Kiel im Januar 2020 To my parents and my husband whose consistent motivation kindled my educational path Table of Contents 1 Introduction ................................................................................................................ 1 2 Colorism – Theoretical Framework ........................................................................... 5 2.1 A Global Phenomenon ....................................................................................... 8 2.2 A Socializing Practice ........................................................................................ 9 2.3 Institutionalization of Colorism........................................................................ 12 3 India – A Brief Historical Background .................................................................... 16 3.1 The Aryan Migration ........................................................................................ 17 3.2 The Development of Caste System .................................................................. 17 3.3 The British Rule ............................................................................................... 19 4 Fair Skin Tone as a Social Capital ........................................................................... 22 4.1 Whiteness – A Symbol of Cleanliness and Beauty .......................................... 25 4.2 The Classification of Egg Donors and Surrogacy Practices............................. 27 4.3 Matrimonial Websites and Advertisements ..................................................... 28 4.4 The Relationship between Female Body and Appearance ............................... 31 5 Representation in Indian Media ............................................................................... 33 5.1 Indian Cinema .................................................................................................. 35 5.1.1 Bollywood’s Brownface Syndrome .......................................................... 35 5.1.2 Song Lyrics ............................................................................................... 37 5.1.3 Trend of Foreign Background Dancers ..................................................... 40 5.1.4 Foreign Women – making it big in Bollywood ........................................ 42 5.2 Fairness Products’ Advertisements .................................................................. 43 5.3 Billboards and Magazines ................................................................................ 48 5.4 Beauty Pageants ............................................................................................... 49 6 Consumer Culture and Skin Lightening Products’ Market ..................................... 52 6.1 First Fairness Creams – For Women & Men ................................................... 55 6.2 Range of Fairness Products .............................................................................. 58 6.2.1 Fairness Soap – FairGlow ......................................................................... 59 6.2.2 Fairness Face Washes ............................................................................... 60 6.3 Other Skin Lightening Treatments ................................................................... 60 6.4 Magical Transformation ................................................................................... 62 6.5 Effects of the Usage of Skin Lightening Products ........................................... 64 7 Is the Mindset Changing in 21st Century? ............................................................... 66 7.1 Women of Worth .............................................................................................. 66 7.2 The Law Passed in 2014 ................................................................................... 67 7.3 Indian Actors Rejecting Hefty Advertisement Offers ...................................... 68 7.4 Ripples in the Ocean......................................................................................... 69 8 Concluding Remarks................................................................................................ 72 Deutschsprachige Zusammenfassung ............................................................................. 76 Appendix ......................................................................................................................... 81 Bibliography .................................................................................................................... 87 List of Figures Figure 1 – Kali Mata – black goddess statue Figure 2a – A match-making website asks for skin tone Figure 2b – A projection of skin tone diversity in India Figure 3 – Matrimonial section of a newspaper Figure 4 – Brownface in Bollywood Figure 5 – A snapshot of a song from 1960s Figure 6 – Foreign background dancers Figure 7 – The fairer the girl, the happier she is Figure 8 – Hoarding of Fair & Lovely in an Indian city Figure 9 – L’Oréal White Perfect Range Figure 10 – Aishwarya Rai (1994) Manushi Chillar (2017) Figure 11 – Miss India 2019 state finalists Figure 12 – Shahrukh Khan endorses men’s fairness cream Figure 13 – Review of glutathione capsules Figure 14 – Kajol before and after Figure 15 – Skin foundation does not match skin color Figure 16 – Beautiful women in India Questions posted in a south Asian ladies’ (living in Germany) Facebook group on Oct 8, 2019: 1. Have you or someone you know associated white skin tone with being beautiful? 2. Any biasness in our society witnessed based on skin tones? (Job/marriage prospects etc.) Lol this has happened to me umpteen times.... we're 2 sisters, n my younger sister is super fair....like milky white, she's taken my moms complexion and my complexion is normal wheatish. I have had so many aunts and so called family friends ask my mom or me why I m not fair like her and give tips to improve my complexion. My MIL was here n she was adamant on scrubbing my 4 month old daughter face with besan and turmeric paste daily to improve her complexion (I have 2 kids...6 yr old son who is fair just like my mom n sis n now 13 month old daughter whose complexion is like me!) So my mil was super concerned why my daughter is not fair and how to improve her skin color and even said stuff like ladkiyan gori hi achhi lagti hai (MIL is mother-in-law and translation of Hindi words, besan is gram flour and last line’s translation is, girls look good only when fair). Replied by: Anonymous from Mumbai, India.1 1 Introduction There are different ideals of physical beauty in various parts of the world. The Eurocentric beauty ideals have remained dominant in the past century and they suggest a beautiful woman to have Caucasian features, light skin, slender body and straight hair. Among these ideals, light skin is a major parameter and a decisive factor to judge the beauty for the dark-skinned women around the globe. Women are exposed more to this beauty ideal because their outer appearance is far more closely examined in comparison to men (Hunter 2012: 1734). It is already two decades into the twenty-first century, but “the hegemonic ideal of the beautiful fair white woman [still] remains powerful” (see Wade, 2012, cited in Phoenix 2014: 98). Based on the above-mentioned assumption, it is mostly believed that if women are light-skinned, they are beautiful. One might have heard phrase like, “She is pretty, for a dark-skinned woman” inferring that the dark complexion will disqualify a woman from the beauty category. It infers that a woman’s dark skin complexion automatically disqualifies her from being beautiful (Orbe & Harris 2015: 181). Women are constantly bombarded with unrealistic beauty images both in electronic and print media. Such beauty images cause a sense of dissatisfaction in the women about their skin color. South Asian women, specifically the Indian women, are made aware of the significance of light skin from a very young age, as indicated from the real-life example mentioned above. 1 The person is known but anonymously identified here due to personal reasons. The text is copied from her original comment on the Facebook post. The choice of her words signifies a great deal into the issue of skin color bias faced by dark-skinned and even wheatish (a term, derived from wheat, commonly used to suggest light brown skin color ) people in India. It is interesting to note how food items milk and wheat are used to describe the skin tone. The persistence of her mother-in-law to act against the brown skin of her infant daughter indicates a deep-rooted preference for light skin. 1 It’s a common cultural practice to prefer and openly admire light skin, commonly known as fair skin in India. The preference for light skin in India can be attributed to numerous factors, such as an extensive history of being ruled predominantly by the light- skinned people, the development of caste system, British colonialism, dissemination of globalism and dominant hegemony of whiteness (Nagar 2018: 5). The goal of this thesis is to uncover the establishment of lightness of skin color in India as a beauty ideal. The light skin acts as a social capital and tremendously improves the value and life opportunities of a woman’s