I’m interested in this discussion because my fiancé is Indian. As a Scandinavian white female I find your comment that “very fair people are rarely beautiful” tantamount to saying “very dark people are rarely beautiful” – it goes against what I think we must try to establish here: to love yourself and respect others. This is important to me personally also because our children will surely have a skin tone darker than the average Scandinavian.

Historically, with short summers and long winters, the people here in the North had to absorb through their skin all the vitamin D they could get from the Sun, hence the “wheatish” skin tone. It’s not any different to the situation in Africa, Asia and other parts of the world where people with a skin tone suitable to the conditions in that area once survived the best. Skin tone acquired a cultural significance much later.

Some (thankfully, few) South Asians we’ve met have referred to me as a “gori” when they talk of me being different and inadequate culturally. This is frustrating considering that I obviously can’t help my skin tone any more than a person with darker complexion. I also resent that views of my personality are imposed on me simply because of the way I look (ie. I must not know how it feels to be discriminated against for my color, so I am an ignorant and proud gori who will never be as “pure” as desi girls.) What I am saying is that skin color can be used against everybody. Please don’t encourage this in any way by glorifying one single hue, be it black, white or brown.

This problem will not be solved by turning around and saying darker skin is more beautiful than fair skin is. It’s only when we all accept our natural look and begin to love it that skin whitening creams and tanning products alike will become redundant. However, with the cultural factors, the burdens of history and the media imposing their views on us, it is certainly very difficult. This calls for us to fight these effects in our personal lives and in what we tell our friends and future children about the significance of color.

I was actually cleaning our bathroom cupboards today and found some skin whitening creams my fiancé had brought from India, then looked them up on Google. We had a talk and he agreed he doesn’t need those. I am throwing out what’s left of the Fair & Handsome products today.

A few days ago I was reading a frustrated person’s blog who is concerned about her weight and how people keep telling her to reduce it. And she wrote a similar blog as yours, except she thought who said Size Zero meant being beautiful… It’s an interesting read and im sure many of you will be able to connect with it.

http://yello.pk/blog/vardabilal/zer0-is-not-a-size/8695

I read your comment with interest but eventually I was taken aback by its simplistic argument. What do you suggest? “Blame it on the forefathers” is a tune that has been played to often and that the present generation has to overcome.
As far as I understood the article it is not looking at the historical development of how skin colour has come into being (i.e. the biological-chemical process..) but the cultural values that are ascribed to a certain shade, colour, name it what you want, of a person’s outer covering. Of course, due to certain exterior conditions skin colour tends to be lighter or darker BUT the point is, not to infer essential social values from that. Because this thought-process attributes values from outside, constructed by society to a person’s skin.
So, this contemporary ad and its reinforcment of these culturally alledgedly more desirable skin colour highlights the perpetuation of the signification of a certain shade of skin colour that is culturally more valued than another.
In examining the ad critically its implicit message “fair=more lovely” is questioned and challenged and it is the present generation’s opportunity to do so not the forefather’s.

Obviously, things are enormously complex here. In rigid class-based societies, being exposed to sun probably was, to a degree, a sign of manual labor. If you worked outside, you got darker. In colonial societies, it was sometimes a sign of “bad blood” ie a marker of genetics and ties to colonial Europe.

In parts of sub-sahara Africa – as far as I know – this actually is not that much of an issue because the skin complexity is more uniform and thus skin tone cannot act as a marker of difference. They do, however, straighten their hair as an alternative to this. What a strange world!

I loved the Menz Active – haven’t seen that before.

However, when it comes to popular culture or the prevalent society’s thoughts I do feel that many would not look at a dark boy or girl and connect it to the beauty of folk or religious or cultural traditions. The fact that an ad like this can run in South Asia or Middle East and not stir negative outcry shows how prevalent the feeling is in the region. And even in cases where historically there were color biases, the fact that in today’s world these ads are still running, such products are still selling, colloquial jokes, family’s preferences still exist goes to show how perhaps commodification of people’s weaknesses have helped strengthen the biases instead of eradicating them.