Posted:
13 years ago
. Why are the actors usually light-skinned, even in films from Southern India?
The hot-button issue, with most of my correspondents on the same
side. Some readers, often Tamil residents or fans of Tamil and Telugu
films (in southern India), listed several stars of darker hue. Sourabh
Gupta points out: "Though fair actors might be favored by the producers
of the movies, the masses seem to care less. Ajay Devgan ... Manoj Bajpa
... Suniel [Sunil] Shetty, Rajnikanth, and even Mithuh Chakarvathy were
all stars. even if they weren't fair skinned. The elitist in India
might have the conception that fair is beautiful, but I think masses
will love anyone who can act or represents them."
But the majority agreed that the stars on the screen are
lighter-skinned than most of the people watching them. It's not just a
movie preoccupation. "You'll find every girl in India trying to make
herself more fair-skinned than she is by every cream possible," observes
Arun Mani. "Hence all the skin care products in India are designed to
match the mindset by advertising to give a lighter skin. I am pretty
sure most people in India don't know what the word 'tanning' means
Mothers don't let their daughters out the sun, lest they will get dark
skins. And guys in India always think the basic requirement for a girl
to be beautiful is that she should be fair! So white-skinned people in
India think they are good-looking. If you look at south Indian movies,
the actor might be dark-skinned; but the actress will be light-skinned."
Often they are imported, as Madras' ace auteur Mani Rathnam did with
the Nepali actress Manisha Koirala.
The prejudice could be a vestige of the caste system: "In general,
the lighter the skin color of an Indian, the higher social class that
person is perceived to have," says Risha Patel. "It is thought that the
darker individuals must have been through multiple hardships — e.g.,
works in the sun — which causes them to have a darker complexion." Or it
could be a hangover from the Raj and earlier colonizers of the
subcontinent. "There are plenty of dark skinned actors and actresses,
especially in South Indian movies," observes Sribuddaraju, "but they are
made up to look fairer than usual due to the age long discrimination
against dark skin in favor of light-skinned 'superior' races that
invaded and settled down in India throughout the ages."
Beauty is power, power beauty. Is light considered right because it
is the color of the dominant class or caste? Or do the powerful simply
get to decide what's attractive? Here's a sad generalization: In Europe,
the U.S. and Africa, as well as India, the light-skinned Northerners
are the bosses of the dark-skinned Southerners. "Shade-ism," prejudice
based on skin gradients, exists everywhere, as attested to by this
poignant tale from Tammy, an adoptive mother in the U.S.:
"Having two beautiful Indian daughters, one with medium skin and one
with dark, I can tell you that there is prejudice based on skin
gradients in India, including southern India where my girls are from. I
saw it when I was there in 1994 to pick up my lighter-skinned daughter.
"You are so lucky to be getting her" they told me, as the caregivers
ignored my companion's darker- skinned child. Mallika was spoiled in the
orphanage. They would rarely put her down. They were so loving to her
that they didn't really let me be with her until we left for Madras.
"A few years later we adopted Maya from the same orphanage. She came
to us with all the signs of neglect. She had no expression and no
muscle-tone in her legs. She swayed to pass the time and even though she
was the same age upon her arrival as Mallika, couldn't talk or walk. A
few weeks after her arrival she began to thrive because she actually had
someone to cuddle her and love her now. We have her in special
education programs to make up for the 16 months of little brain
development. (The first two years of brain development are crucial to
the intellect of the person.) I don't know if we will ever get her to
the point that she could have been at had we gotten her right away.
Interestingly, we have not found this type of prejudice in our country.
Many more people remark on how beautiful Maya is. We have even been
approached by a catalog photographer who wanted to photograph her