Lalit Dairies
An Open Page of Thoughts and Experiences
Beauty Standards: Is There Really a Measure for Good and Bad?
Today I am going to talk about a subject whose terror looms over the entire world. Don't worry, I am not talking about corruption here, I am going to talk about that scale on which people differentiate between beautiful and ugly. Look, if you ask me, these two words should never have existed in the first place, because after all, how can we call someone beautiful and someone ugly? Just because this face is not pleasing to us, we call it ugly, and the one we find good, we call it beautiful?
This matter might seem small to you, but if we sit down and contemplate on it, we will realize that it is as deep as the bank account balance of these corrupt politicians.
Let me talk about my own childhood when I was small, went to school for the very first time, and met many children there. Everyone was unique in themselves. From their physical structure to their thinking and understanding capacity, everything was different. Trust me, this story is not just mine; it has happened to all of us at some point or another.
And those children who were a bit dark, whom we call wheatish, or other children who had a darker skin tone, the teachers themselves would address them with words like 'Kalu', 'Kaali', 'Kallu', and hearing this, the whole class would start laughing. And that boy or girl who was called 'Kalu' or 'Kaali' became an object of mockery. However, with time and society, people accepted this too.
So after all, who taught those teachers to call a child fair or dark? Or why did the other children in the class laugh only when the teacher said 'Kalu', 'Kaali'? Why didn't they laugh when they were called fair? Is being fair really a symbol of respect and being dark just a gift of mockery?
And then as these children grew up, they started believing that whoever is fair is beautiful and whoever is dark is ugly. And these small children who grew up, none other than we and you are them.
If all this wasn't enough, products arrived in the market claiming that they will turn your dark skin white, and make you fair from dark. Oh brother! Why on earth does one need to be fair? Is being fair really a symbol of respect?
The surprising thing is that products from these companies are still selling in huge numbers. This obsession is deeply rooted in global colorism and Eurocentric beauty standards, which dictate that lighter skin is superior. However, I believe that with time, people have started understanding. Movements took place in many countries against this, which showed some change. But here I am talking about the country of India, my own country, where perhaps even today orthodoxy lives in houses by making a separate room for itself, and they do not want to change from this.
Why do I feel the need to write all this? Because discrimination on the basis of skin color still exists today. No matter how much we deny it, it is there. 70% of men would still want to marry only a fair-skinned woman, and that too under societal pressure, even if they don't wish to themselves.
Even today in schools, teachers are using addresses like 'bhoora', 'gori', 'kaali', 'kallu'. Well, with time this will surely decrease, but when we think that we too have once discriminated against someone for having dark skin or skin not to our liking, we will feel a lot of shame ourselves.