Dear Indian Society, Please Stop Associating Dark Skin Colour With Poverty. Your Love Affair With Fair Skin Is Getting Old!
Say what you want, but we Indians love fair skin. It really makes me question how weird we are – because we look down upon dark skin – a skin tone most Indians share. And the worst part about this racism is that people who are in a position to influence and change this mentality of our society are the ones promoting this behaviour! For instance, just recently a social media influence named Ansha Mohan darkened her skin colour to fake poverty. Needless to say, she received a lot of flak and backlash from people on the internet. But the question still stands, why do we associate dark skin colour with poverty?
And I believe the answer to that lies somewhere in the entertainment industry. For years now, we see actresses with dark skin colour getting the roles of these women who have a tonne of struggles in life and are often shown to be tomboy-ish in nature and belonging to a middle-class family. Matlab, is there a rule that rich women can’t be dark and poor women can’t be fair?
Also Read: Nandita Das’ New Video ‘India’s Got Colour’ Is The Official Anthem To End Our Fair Skin Obsession And We Love It!
In fact, in a recent interview, Kalki Koechlin revealed how the colour of the skin still dictates the kind of role an actor is offered. She even went on to say how she has experienced it first-hand. She said that she has got typecast in the rich girl image, despite the fact that she has played many versatile roles throughout her career.
Speaking about how fair skin colour is associated with upper-class people, Kalki Koechlin said, “I have had a director say to me, ‘I think you will completely ace this role because you play a psychotic in it’. That’s the kind of perception people have of me, and I feel quite frustrated. Obviously, because of the colour of my skin, I can only play these upper-class characters.” She even went on to say that she knows an actor who is always given the role of a maid because of her dusky complexion.
Also Read: Masaba Gupta Says Skin Colour And Scars Are Irrelevant, The Important Thing Is To Keep Your Chin Up
And if you think, Kalki Koechlin is the only one who was put in a box because of her skin colour, think again. Even Tillotama Shome has been put in the box and that too by the people on the internet. Yep, a troll on social media called her a “flop actress who looks like a maid”. And let’s not even pretend that the word “maid” was not a comment on her skin colour because it most definitely was.
When I read and hear such things, I get so frustrated! I mean, we’re in the 21st century for crying out loud and we’re still judging and differentiating people based on their skin colour? We’re literally the country that takes pride in our diversity and yet here we are discriminating on basis of colour. I really hope that this obsession we have with white skin comes to an end before we burden women with such ridiculous beauty standards.
