"Anyone who's tried to buy makeup in India will know that finding the perfect match for your skin is a fair person's game." Greetings to the reader. I hope your day is going good. Today I would like to talk about the autocratic and unfair beauty standards of our country. The beauty industry here in India either likes to pretend as if dark skin doesn't exist, or worse, knows that it exists, but wants to send the message that there's no room for the dark skinned in the beauty world. Because dark simply isn't beautiful.
The term colourism was first coined in 1982 by Pulitzer prize-winning feminist author Alice Walker. And she defined it as a prejudicial or preferential treatment of same race people based solely on their colour. Now, colourism in India has been around for ages and it has only been worse ever since. Leaving aside the various fraternities and empires and even Britishers who emigrated and then ruled the country. In the Ramayana, the virtuous hero Rama is depicted as fair whereas the impetuous Ravana is depicted as dark . In the epic Mahabharata, which contains the holy bhagavad gita as an episode as well, and which I am personally a great believer and fan of ; Lord Krishna is the hero of the native people. Intrestingly, Indians prefer to depict him as blue in place of black. Krishna means dark . He's described in the Mahabharata as "Neela Megha Shyama" which means as dark as a rain filled cloud . As far as I know , rain filled clouds are pretty dark , are black in colour rather than being sky blue- which Krishna ji is inexplicably depicted as. I mean, forget animals even gods cannot escape the discrimination of this country . And apparently, India never got over this pathetic bias . Look around and you'll see the signs . If you have dark or even brown skin , the world is bent on making you atleast two shades lighter. And the beauty industry is the biggest offender.see this 👇
There are a lot of international brands that are bringing in a lot of different colours in terms of skin tones . Unfortunately , that is not the case in India as the Indian brands aren't doing so which is really sad. For instance if you take a dark skinned foundation and you check it out . And you'll realise that it'll go from, like, super fair tones then there are 3 tones which are very close to each other and then there is super dark skin tones. So, someone who's in between doesn't have the opportunity to select just one foundation. They have to mix colours to make their suitable shade or atleast closer. Also, drug store brands are the worst possible offenders. Foundations that are affordable rarely have options for darker skin tones.
Maybelline's fit me foundation was a worldwide revolution in this area .
They launched their 40 different makeup shades in the international markets. But something changed when it came to India. They had launched only 17 shades in the country. Because majority of the audience in India is built to wear lighter skin tones in the country irrespective of their natural suitable tones. WHY would the company launch shades for they know the outcome?!
This racial agenda in India is highly hypocrite. people need to understand that makeup doesn't mean making someone fair because being beautiful has no connection to being fair or of being any colour for that matter. People need to change their mindests for the better as the world needs to change for the better . Colourism is such a never ending problem to talk about . And there are so many other concerns in the world ...ever ongoing . Beauty standards with regard to colourism is one fraternity where racism is being practiced and there are so so many more , which is so sad to start with. But, I feel, this is a problem no less than the pandemics in our world . No doubt we could call this a mental pandemic.
Unlike the physical, economical problems in the world that our so difficult to improvise , what does the removal of this discrimination require ? Nothing more than a change in one's mentality , behaviour and intellect. This problem requires only this much effort and how sad is it that we have to call something that should naturally be there in people an effort. I hope people get this someday. Thankyou so much for reading me out patiently and I hope your day goes well just as I hope it was going so earlier.
Om namah shivay!✨✨
Kommentarer