In Asia, colourism is rampant. Dark-skinned women constantly face discrimination at workplace, school and even by their relatives.
I personally experienced that when I was 8 years old in school. One of my
teachers called me, with a smirk, hey ‘karupi’, which means ‘blackie’
in Tamil. A lot of women have been the subject of racist jokes due to their
darker skin tone.
As a result, women of darker complexion often find themselves not being able
to fit in as they were made to believe from young that they are not good enough
due to the colour of their skin. People
constantly compare dark skin toned women to fairer skin. It was not
possible to escape their judgments.
Discrimination against dark-skinned women is not something new as it has
existed for decades due to Bollywood influence, where not a single actresses
has dark skin tone, thus creating the belief that lighter skin is better
because they are beautiful. What, is striking that some of the big celebrities
like Priyanka
Chopra and Shah Rukh have endorsed skin whitening products. This is a
disgrace to darker complexion people.
Due to societal pressure, a lot of Asian women who felt unattractive turned
to skin whitening products such as “Fair
and Lovely” to look fairer so they would be considered beautiful and
accepted by the society.
Many women lost their confidence and have low-self-esteem hearing their dark
complexion brought up in a negative way.
This colourism is so strongly rooted that dark-skinned girls do not see
themselves as beautiful and refrain from taking up modelling as a career. I
believe once prominent people in the film and fashion industry stop
advocating skin lightening products, dark-skinned people will be recognised
as beautiful.
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