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| Beauty in India: Fair Skin, Bollywood and the West By: Deepti Dhir “She is a very pretty girl, she is fair.” Having left my home in India to live abroad many years ago, I now only vaguely recollect such complements directed at my skin. My mother reminded me that my grandmother too, believed that a pregnant woman should eat something white in the morning if she wants her baby to turn out fair. Giving two-thumbs up to whiter skin still marks the Indian subcontinent today. Advertisements in Indian newspapers connect ready brides to potential husbands with “fair” as a key attribute to landing the right man. But why this attachment to fair skin? Some say it stems from Indians’ beliefs and values, but what is clear is that the media takes full advantage of this love-of-the-fair. Many point fingers at beauty products such as Fair and Lovely, a cream for whitening the skin, which seems to be taking the most hits on this issue. Its advertisements stick fair against dark-skin as the distinction between the good and the bad, now putting forth a Fair and Handsome for men. The looks of teenage girls and young women are not ignored in the hustle and bustle of Indian cities today. While I was spending time in Mumbai over a vacation, I went to the popularly known Lakmé beauty parlor at one of its many branches. Sitting in the back room with one of parlor’s beauticians, we spoke of the unfortunate pressure on women today to look perfect. I wondered if I was still living in the India my parents and grandparents had spoken of so fondly. “Even to be a front desk receptionist, beyond your qualifications, the first thing they see is how you look,” says Saranya Ravi, 20, of Bangalore, India. She adds to her list the airline business, who, she says, wants “the tall, skinny, fair-skinned ones.” Bollywood and its stars are another very notable pressure on women in India. “Bollywood is the trendsetter for India,” says Priyanka Mehrotra, 20, a native of Pune, a city only a few hours away from Bollywood’s hub in Mumbai, famous for its movie studios and for the homes of Bollywood’s most loved stars. Referring to all the hype around Bollywood’s actors and actresses, Ravi says, “You see them everywhere: on television, in newspapers, on flyers. People feel pressured to be like them and look like them. They are idealized.” It is, then, these very Bollywood actresses who constitute a fairer group of women with similarly picked models for other forms of media. The West is also taking a hold of Indian teens and young women today. In Bollywood movies these days, you will find actresses in foreign locations such as New York or London, clothed in short, skimpy dresses, with male heroes glaring and swooning as the camera traces their bare legs and hips all the way up. “The western ideal of the ideal body shape is taking over in urban India,” says Mehrotra, “We are getting more westernized in our definition of beauty.” In addition to school or work, a teen or young woman in a city like Mumbai visits friends for a latté at Café Coffee Day or Barista, both much like the American Starbucks, reads the latest Bollywood gossip in magazines like Stardust and Showtime, goes for a regular threading and waxing at one of the many beauty parlors, and spends her day in a comfortable pair of jeans. After arriving in Mumbai I myself felt a bit displaced in my sense of fashion and hip-ness. However, there is a contradiction in how American teens and Indian teens understand beauty. “The way they present themselves is very different. While Indians tend more toward westernization and wearing tiny clothes, Americans tend to incorporate other cultures in the way they beautify themselves,” says Ravi. This is the irony of it all. While we, sitting in the U. S., find different kinds of sparkly Indian bindis or gold bangles quite cool, Indian teens in cities are crowding the new, western-looking shopping malls instead of their local street vendors. As east meshes with the west, so do standards of beauty. As I travel back and forth between two sides of the world, I feel myself pulled in two directions, trying to take in the shifting ideas of beauty in both countries. In the economically developing cities of India, Bollywood names, advertising and Indian values all collide to define the term beauty for youngsters. With old values and new ideas both coming their way, this group will have to make some bold choices. |
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