A Major Issue in South Asia: Colorism
Fatima Shaikh
Prof. Kyr. R Mack
English 104–78: Writing, Literary, and Discourse
31 October 2020
While growing up, I would always spend time with family friends, whether I knew them personally or not. I remember this one incident when we met a family friend. She took a look at my brother, my sister, and I and looked towards my mom, and said “Thank god all your kid’s skin tone went towards you rather than their dad,” while laughing. My dad laughed too, but I still remember him looking down, showing a bit of a disappointed face. The comment was directed towards my dad’s skin tone as he has darker skin while my mom is lighter. This affected his feelings although he tried not to show it.
What is colorism? Why does it even matter? Colorism is discriminating against people of one skin tone over another within one racial community. Normalization of colorism leads to many problems involving the mental health and even the physical health of people this discrimination is targeted towards. Within South Asia and South Asian communities throughout the world, this is a large problem and affects the life decisions people make. Lighter skin is perceived as more desirable than darker skin, leading to insecurity and attempts to minimize this “imperfection” to feel beautiful. In South Asia, lighter skin is brought up in marriages and finding love, in the ability to get a job among other facets of life. Dating and some arranged marriage sites even allow people to filter prospective spouses by skin tone. This is a form of literacy — expressing history, culture, and societal standards through the colorist beauty standards in South Asia. In this discussion, I want to point of some indiscretions of Bollywood, a multi-billion dollar film industry in South Asia, including harmful songs targeted towards those with darker skin tones and even black people, and skin lightening creams. Skin lightening creams are bleaching agents which can be used as a face cream to lighten your skin tone. The indiscretions of Bollywood and skin bleaching agents, among others, work together to perpetuate colorism within South Asia leading to harmful beliefs and judgments, making way for a major problem within South Asian communities throughout the world that must be addressed.
The colorism in South Asia was most likely normalized due to colonization by the British and the caste system they instilled. “The British colonizers were able to build on India’s existing caste system. So the upper-caste people who were powerful had fairer skin. And the lower-caste people, when they would work outside, those castes started having darker skin [from prolonged sun exposure]” (Frayer), which may explain the history of colorism in South Asia. The history behind it continues to impact the colorist culture today. Marriage, job opportunities among other important parts of life are affected by colorism, where those with lighter skin are favored.
So how do South Asians promote colorism within the community? Let’s take the example of a popular fairness cream many women throughout South Asia use.
This is an ad for this fairness cream, Fair and Lovely. The cream is a bleaching agent to lighten dark skin. Many women begin to use this at a young age through pressure from family members and insecurities caused by society to lighten their skin. With the ad, take a look at how unhappy she looks towards the left, where her skin is a bit darker. Now, look towards the far right where she is smiling and holding up the cream. This would leave the impression that her beauty and happiness came from lighter skin. Because of this, many women throughout South Asia use it to look more beautiful, as beauty is associated with light skin.
Yami Gautam, a popular Bollywood (the major film industry in South Asia) is featured in this ad, and her response to criticism brushes off the topic (Goyal). Endorsing this product indicates that Yami’s beauty came from this product because it made her fairer skinned, leaving a harmful idea with her fans. When criticized for participating in these advertisements, she brushed off the questions. This may lead to her audience dismissing colorism as well, further normalizing the practice. The influence she has over many people causes this problem, and those with darker skin may begin to use it in an effort to become as beautiful as her.
As a response to Fair and Lovely, South Asian creators who address colorism as an issue created billboards to provide a new perspective and juxtapose the issue of colorism. In order to do this, they used a play on words to express that darker-skinned South Asian women are beautiful too. Take a look at the image below:
This was done in an effort to combat the colorist cream, and help to show that women with darker skin can still be beautiful despite what society may say. The billboard uses a play on words and replaces the “fair” (which refers to light skin) with unfair (referring to darker skin). “But I’m lovely” is then written, as an effort to show that darker-skinned women are beautiful too. This response to the fair and lovely brand is powerful and important in the major issue of colorism in South Asia. It offers a new perspective on the beauty standard and shows that dark-skinned women can be just as beautiful as light-skinned women.
Let’s look at another major example, the song “Beyonce Sharma Jayegi,” from the movie Khali Peeli. This lyric directly translates to “Beyonce will be embarrassed.” They indicate that Beyonce will be embarrassed when she sees how light-skinned the girl being referenced is and would feel ashamed for the way she looked compared to this light-skinned woman. Of course, this song was a direct response to Beyonce’s song, “Brown Skinned Girl” where she included a dark-skinned Indian woman to portray as beautiful, who are not as commonly appreciated in South Asia. After hearing the song, many South Asian communities were outraged at the song and so created memes and tweets mocking it:
The tweet by Sonia Mariam Thomas mocks the song and expresses her feelings of embarrassment listening to the song. The background photo of the tweet is a photo taken on the set of the music video for “Beyonce Sharma Jayegi”. The use of memes ties into social media culture, where we laugh about and make fun of these topics in order to show our dismay for the blatant colorism, which affects the viewers of Bollywood. This tweet uses sarcasm to critique or challenge the colorist culture of South Asia. The tweet as well as many other memes as a result of the discriminatory song finally led the producers to change the lyrics of the song as they were extremely insensitive.
Moreover, the issue of colorism within South Asia is important and something that needs to be addressed. It can take away from job opportunities, potential love interests, and be damaging towards the mental health as well as the physical health of people. My dad felt insecure and became less confident, and it even made my siblings and I think about darker skin differently with this experience. The photos throughout show the urgency to address this issue and attend to change it. In order to, see this form of literacy — the history, culture, and experiences — differently we must use our voices and criticize all normalized acts of colorism. This is important for the overall lives of South Asian people, as it can affect love and marriage, and job opportunities among other important aspects of life.
Works Cited
Frayer, Lauren. “Black Lives Matter Gets Indians Talking About Skin Lightening And Colorism.” NPR, NPR, 9 July 2020, www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2020/07/09/860912124/black-lives-matter-gets-indians-talking-about-skin-lightening-and-colorism.
Goyal, Divya. “Yami Gautam On Endorsing Fairness Products: ‘Bala Proves I Know What I’m Doing’.” NDTV.com, NDTV, 31 Oct. 2019, www.ndtv.com/entertainment/yami-gautam-on-endorsing-fairness-products-bala-proves-i-know-what-im-doing-2124984.
Kaundinya, Anaka. “a Fair and Lovely Ad.” How Fair & Lovely Bottled Up India’s Insecurities, 2018, www.kajalmag.com/fair-and-lovely-colorism-india/.
Neon, Quint. “A Picture of the Actors in the Song, and a Tweet Responding to It.” The Quint, 2020, images.thequint.com/thequint%2F2020–09%2F3281e3f5-e7c9–42ac-8d6b-c7b72a446db0%2FUntitled_design__1_.jpg?rect=0%2C0%2C1920%2C1080&auto=format%2Ccompress&fmt=webp&format=webp&w=900&dpr=2.0.
Parameswaran, Radhika. “Response to Fair and Lovely Ad.” Asia Experts Forum, 2015, i1.wp.com/asiaexpertsforum.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/campaign-e1492233371427.jpg?w=1417.
Sourav. “Beyonce Sharma Jayegi Lyrics English Translation — Meaning.” LyricsSawan, Blogger, 12 Sept. 2020, lyricssawan.blogspot.com/2020/09/beyonce-sharma-jayegi-lyrics-meaning.html.
