Dark skin is lovely & I love the colour black

 Karuppu dhaan enakku pidicha colour-u. Lol.

This is a tamil song that was made in the last decade. It's a song about all the awesome things that were black and finally, the singer sings about how her boyfriend is also dark and awesome.

The funny thing is, the girl singing the song was fair skinned. All the background dancers were dark. What are we trying to say here again?

Why I'm writing this:

There was a recent episode at work where someone mentioned that I didn't have the face to do Bhangra, because I was dark and a south Indian. For someone who feels completely confident about her looks, well - at least her skin - this was very upsetting and shocking. 

This also happened in a context where parents have been insisting that I look at stupid matrimony profiles which all echo this idea of only wanting "a fair bride". That's when I remembered, a statement a male friend had made while we were still in school. We were looking at passport size photographs to apply for our board exams. He looked at mine and said "You should use this when you're getting married because you're looking so fair in it" and I didn't know what exactly to say to it and I said "Skin colour is not an issue!" (which was how I felt then) 

I was so oblivious to my skin colour till this year when this happened. Stupid that it took so long for me to have that epiphany. I realised how backward Indians are. I realised how insensitive they can be and don't realise that it is uncivilised and hurtful to discriminate on the basis of skin colour.  I've personally also heard a story from a colleague who received remarks like "Is that why you're so dark?" to an innocent recollection of  a childhood memory of being punished and made to stand in the sun. 

Let me reiterate. IT IS NOT OKAY TO TELL SOMEONE THAT THEY'RE DARK or ask them WHY THEY ARE DARK. Like, hello, genes. It is also not okay to tell them they can't participate in an activity because they're dark. It is NOT okay to recommend methods to make them lighter. They love the way they look and you're trying to insult them by saying that they could be better - and that they're not good enough right now.

Now onto random meta analysis:

Thamizh movies have had a curious take on dark skin. Most of our male leads have been dark - Rajnikanth, Vijaykanth, Dhanush etc. 

You will see scenes where people will fight for dark skin - like the one below where Shreya rejects Rajnikanth when he proposes to her because he was dark (that wasn't the real reason, they later reconcile where she mentions how his dark skin is the most attractive thing about him). There are a few scenes after that where Rajini tries to become white. Literally, white. He turns up and then she still rejects him and tells him that she liked him dark. He subsequently reveals that he had paint on. There's a song where they used graphics and made him white. 

This was in humour and the essence of the story was that dark skin is awesome, as long as it is a guy with dark skin. Shreya is still fair, most of the women in Rajini's movies (and possibly even in his life) are fair skinned.

I think about it and feel that it must be so liberating for south Indian men to be proud of their appearance because they have major icons to look up to - who are dark. (I believe they're trying to change that with Surya and SRK starring in ads about fair and handsome.)

Unfortunately, the same thing doesn't play out for women. Fair skin is still the ideal. A woman is beautiful if she is light skinned. 

I'm not going to blame thamizh movies for doing it this way but I just want to point this out to movie makers. Make our women closer home, your mother, your sister, your children - the average thamizh household - are they dark or fair? I'm also going to reach out to people reading this. Beauty is from within. Whether you're fair or dark, it shouldn't matter. Whatever your colour is, embrace it. However you look, love yourself. The media can't dictate how you feel about yourself. You should be stronger than that.

Some say that this is a colonial hangover, it's the indoctrination of the idea that white skin is superior. All I'd like to say is this: it's about time we grew out of colonisation. It's been more than 60 years for crying out loud. Someone mentioned that it's a form of self hate and is unhealthy. That is so true.

To those people who discriminate or think that dark skin is ugly - what you see in the movies is just a minor/small fraction of the population, a figment of someone's imagination and meant for entertainment. Their career advancement is based on them looking "attractive"(or whatever the director thinks is attractive). They do all the things they do - because they're working and their income depends on it. 

Other women are just like you, they're real human beings leading normal lives. They spend all their time working, taking care of their children, running a business or a household (the latter is equally challenging, trust me). They do NOT have time or the ability to spend money to maintain a high-end diet, receive endless facials, waxes, bleaches, glycolic peels or plastic surgeries.  You need to accept it and move on.

So - to help you all snap out of the bias, here are pictures of REAL and beautiful women on my friendlist who I coerced into giving their photographs. They're all dusky to coffee to chocolate to dark chocolate, they're so attractive! Embrace beauty.