Light vs. Dark: A Twisted Beauty Standard

When I was in the seventh grade, I took a trip to India. It was a place of rich cultural contradiction, which I chose to take no part in; I was only twelve. Holed up in my Aji’s apartment watching the Disney channel, one day I saw an ad for Fair and Lovely cream, which promised to lighten the complexion of the woman desperate for change. I thought this was a joke. Who would go to such lengths to lighten their skin? The cream probably didn’t even work, I thought. I went back to watching the Disney channel, not pausing to take note of how light everyone’s skin was.

The standard of beauty facing girls today is one of whiteness. Everywhere you look, from television, to movies, to advertisements promoting everything from fashion to food, many of the models used are those with the lightest skin. This especially occurs in countries like India where people tend to have skin that is slightly darker. If, from a young age, girls are bombarded with images of light skin, this leads to feelings of inadequacy and, to some extent, ugliness. It prompts people to buy all kinds of bleaching creams in order to do away with the skin color they’ve been given. Lightening cream and bleaching your skin strips it of both color and identity. Bleach is supposed to be used for cleaning and killing harmful germs. Dark skin is not a disease or an affliction. It does not have to be cleaned or cured. We should be raising the next generation of dark skinned girls with a beautiful complexion…not a complex.

While I think that this beauty standard is a huge problem that needs to be addressed, as I have seen how it affects my community, I have not experienced it firsthand. I was born with, and still continue to live with, an extremely light complexion, as a result of both my genetics and my geographical location. However, it is because of this that I have also faced scrutiny. I cannot even begin to tell you the amount of times someone has asked me, “If you’re Indian, why are you white?” Never mind that most people from India’s West Coast have a lighter complexion than most. Every summer I spend as much time in the sun as possible so that I may one day acquire the dark pigmentation of everyone else from my homeland. I want the sun to tan into me a deeper skin tone and a sense of identity. I guess we all want what we don’t have.

In a place of rich cultural contradiction, the complexion of my ancestors, deep in pigment, history, and adaptation, is one that should be worn with pride. To the woman desperate for change: change the rules of society. Change a woman’s place, change a woman’s rights, change a woman’s standard of beauty. But do not change yourself to fit tired, old-fashioned, paling views. You are not more beautiful the less dark your skin is; you are more beautiful the less dark your soul is. To be good, pure, and clean on the inside is what really matters. Beauty is not skin deep. And to be lovely is not always to be fair.