The Beauties and The Brains

A few weeks back I watched a fairness cream advertisement claiming to give ‘high-definition’ fairness to its consumers. I was fairly amused to realise that all the performing actors in it were already naturally fair-skinned. I found the humour in it when I checked the meaning of ‘High-Definition', to understand its correlation to a fairness cream! Cambridge Dictionary explains ‘High Definition’ as - ‘a system for showing very clear pictures on a television or computer screen or for producing very clear sound’. Applying this meaning to the fairness cream advertisement, the product was implied to chisel out human facial features to enhance their looks and improve the vocal tones to make someone sound soothing. In addition, the advertisement’s narrative had once again quite simply underlined what it otherwise would deny - even now a woman’s beauty overshadows her brains and that her capabilities are judged and measured by her skin colour. While looking for some more context on the advertisement and the product it was endorsing, I stumbled across some product unpacking and product utility videos on YouTube. The women in the videos were naturally fair-skinned as well! It made me ponder on why people in the ‘Modern’ age still fall for this scam? Why do such products even succeed in their businesses by promoting a possible modification to a bodily feature that every human being is biologically born with?

Statistically, women around the world still constitute the largest market for beauty products including fairness creams. Some even opt for a more expensive and permanent skin whitening surgery. In all its fairness, even the men have joined this market as consumers. Fairness products now available for both men and women, claim to clear the skin, get rid of dark patches, remove blemishes, tone skin colour to enhance glow. Skin conditions that otherwise can be improved by a mere change in our daily lifestyles. But if you think about it, 2 questions arise. Is the fairness product market targeting wheat-ish and dark-skinned men and women promising to improve their current skin conditions? Or is it targeting light-skinned consumers promising to either enhance their fairness or help them stay fair longer? The answer could be - To whomsoever it may concern!

Every day I watch new advertisements of numerous products claiming to similarly enhance beauty. I cringe every time, realising how ‘Beauty’, is being systematically minimised and shrunken, to primarily mean and relate only with ‘Fairness of skin’. How this diluted concept of ‘Beauty’ is being repeatedly reimposed on the society’s Unconscious Perspectives. Movies, advertisements and other virtual contents mostly advocate that being fair makes you a high achiever in every aspect of life. Whether it is about finding a fair-complexioned husband or wife - instead of a compatible life-partner; or getting a high paying job - even when someone is comparably unqualified. Doesn’t this thought process unmindfully contradict the actual truth of life? The truth, which bases an individual’s success and growth by considering their luck, perseverance and hard-work complemented by learned skills, timeless experience and acquired knowledge? A few years back when I was in between jobs and it was taking me longer than usual to land one, a very concerned friend had enquired why I was not getting a suitable job when I’m so pretty? I had felt weird realising that my own friend outweighed my facial appeal to my hard earned educational qualifications and God-gifted brains! Though companies follow ‘Equal Opportunities Policy’ selecting candidates based on their credentials, I cannot vouch for similar equal considerations in a partner selection process when it comes to marriage or intimate relationships. Now that! Is a totally different ball game!

I have often seen couples flaunt their ‘Fair’ partners to their own friends. They seem more obsessed to know whether or not they received the amount of attention they were seeking for themselves. How many jealous onlookers smirked at them or how many gave an approving nod. I understand that it feels on top of the world, to carry such a beauty on your arm or to be carried on his arm by one such man! Still, I have also wondered about the genuinity of such relationships. Why is there such a craze to ‘acquire and own’ a fair partner? When it comes to arranged marriage, the easiest way to find numerous options for a possibly appropriate partner is to check out the online platforms. But, quite often than not, one of the requirements mentioned on those profiles is a call-out for a fair or very fair prospect. Everything else becomes secondary and menial. Women of marriageable age are constantly nagged by relatives and family to flaunt and focus on their features, not their future. If a woman does not have a socially desirable complexion, the same family and relatives force and emotionally blackmail her to marry any man who would have her. Her desire and freedom to choose her own life-partner stamped illogical and insignificant. Contrarily when it comes to a man, we hear a parent or relative proudly announce, ‘Tumhari shaadi hum hoor se karwayenge’ [reference translation: We will get you married to one with an angelic face (Hoor symbolising an Angel)]. To this, one of my friends once had quite befittingly replied, “What good will come of marrying a Hoor, if she doesn’t have the compassion to hand a glass of water to my thirsty parents?”

The mind is responsible for carving an individual’s nature, receptive thought processes, acquired culture, education and futuristic opinions. It is these virtues that go the distance, stand the test of time and beat the odds to hold a relationship together. It is these virtues that every individual eventually chooses to partner with. Then why is the fairness of skin held more important? Yes. I agree that an individual’s physical appearance always grabs our attention first and creates an impression. But should it also blind us to their true individuality? What’s undeniable is that unconsciously we constantly label the person in front of us, only to be labelled ourselves in return. Physical appeal forces our minds to predict an individual’s lineage, country, culture, religion and the section of the society they come from. We then stereotype our opinions based on the general prejudices attached to their backgrounds. Our judgement becomes so gravely convoluted and clouded that it becomes difficult for us to look beyond our own prejudices. The sad truth remains that the individual doesn’t stand a chance at proving their uniqueness. Any ember of rarity present is called a farce forcing them to lose their identity and fuse with the general milling crowd. The truth is that whether we agree or not, accept or not, acknowledge or not, this absurd idea of ‘Beauty’ has permeated into our psyches, resolutely preserving the illusions of caste, race, social status, economic class and marriage prospects within the world societies. Isn’t fair skin considered to belong to a higher caste, an enlightened race, a sophisticated social stature, an affluent economic class or a good life partner with abundant qualities?

Now consider this. Every thought or idea defining the normality in the society around us is based on our individual opinions. Opinions which formed, based on what we learned from our surroundings over time and eventually what we adopted out of it. So even when there are numerous news articles, medical researches and dermatology studies available, proving how fairness products improve the skin colour by only 20% - that too, to the limit of the natural skin colour we were born with - majority of the society still ignores the scientific findings that also mentions the severe side effects of its unruly overuse. Why do we gather knowledge about ‘Beauty’ so selectively, absorbing only what we want to know and leaving out the rest? India is considered to be one of the biggest markets of fairness and beauty products amongst other Asian countries. In fact, this demand arose from our deep rooted timeworn beliefs, which in turn carved the current societal concept of beauty. Have we ever thought, why we are so obsessed with the idea of a fair-skin? An idea which, I observed, is far more layered than we want to acknowledge. Some researches found this idea to have intensified because of the 200 years of ‘White’ colonisation. Yet, many of us may disagree with this reason. But can we genuinely explain why fair skin is found to be more attractive and desirable?

Isn’t it time that this generation sheds the cloak of such age old ideas and opinions to decipher and reinstate the true meaning of ‘Beauty’ which accounts for the humane virtues more than the physical allure? How long will it take for our society to come out of this prejudice and look at a human’s beauty more holistically? Is this a difference in thought processes of the generations before us? Something that we millennials endearingly love to call as the Generation-gap? Can the existing younger generation assure that they will be better in their choices and decisions to create a new future? Today, where on one hand we emphasize and exert efforts towards women's liberalisation and education for both girls and boys, why do we on the other hand clip their chances of having a better life with forward thought processes, in the name of Beauty? Where we intentionally liberate our sons, why do we unintentionally shackle our daughters with such shallow and superficial opinions? Education helps develop the judgements and outlook that an individual holds towards the world around them. We all are living in the age where the brains outweigh obstacles 2-to-1. The brains usher us towards a better tomorrow - support for the family, progress for the society, new prospects for our children. It is time that we walk out of the shadows of these lifeless artificial perspectives into the shine of the new world of opportunities that will come from doing away with the confines of our own assumptions. 

“Open your eyes to the beauty around you, open your mind to the wonders of life, open your heart to those who love you, and always be true to yourself.”

— Maya Angelou