“Most girls are opting for it these days but they won’t tell you. It’s their secret. But I recommend these whitening injections to every girl I see with a dark complexion,” Sana* told me as she looked at my skin during our first meeting.
To Sana, this is her way of doing social service, to contribute to her society by not being secretive about her fairness treatment and recommending it to all girls. She claimed she had researched about the treatment online and that it doesn’t come with any side-effects.
The fact that she did not find any further details of the glutathione injections online was not even half as surprising as her urge to have her skin whitened. A girl in her early twenties from a well-educated family, pursuing a bachelor’s degree in business administration and looking for job opportunities — does she really think a lighter skin tone is such a must have?
Despite tons of articles having been written on this topic and activists speaking up against the ‘fair is beautiful’ notion in our society, the trend doesn’t seem to be going down. Instead of seeing campaigns similar to the ‘Dark is Beautiful’ one in India, what we see is Zubaida Apa coming up with her own skin whitening soap to make Pakistan ‘gora’. We still see celebrities like Fawad Ahmed (now with a different face) asking ‘biker boys’ to use a fairness cream to save themselves from all the dirt in the air.
Sadly, this phenomenon is not just restricted to our society, but is prevalent all over the world — the only underlying issue being the lack of understanding of self-worth. There has been some voice against the emphasis on ‘surface beauty’ but that is often left unheard. Some countries took the issue more seriously and went to the extent of banning all whitening products. That may be a small first step, but there still is a long way to go till people are made to realise that beauty is more than skin-deep.
We may have written too often against skin whitening but we are yet to see campaigns on our televisions and billboards advocating the idea — just the way they promote materialism or ‘fairness’ — to break peoples’ false conceptions of physical beauty as dictated by certain social norms.
Published in The Express Tribune, May 15th, 2014.
COMMENTS (9)
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@fairskinnedguy:
The younger generation understands this but not most South Asia parents and grandparents. They still have the concept of perceiving GORA rang with beauty. ( like my mum said once 'wo islye ku k gora rang khobsorti ki alamt hai' ). The parents then enforce their sons and make them realize that beta you are good enough hence you deserve a pretty (GORI) wife. :-O
@fairskinnedguy:
Good to know your view about dark skin girls .....apart from skin they have quite sharp features and are intelligent though
@fairskinnedguy: So well said! Would you be willing to let us publish your comment on our Facebook page, http://www.facebook.com/darkisbeautiful
Ideally, we'd like to use your name, along with your comment. You can email us privately at darkisbeautiful@gmail.com and we can discuss further.
We have been running a campaign in India called Dark is Beautiful. To know more about us, visit www.womenofworth.in
@hamza .. agree .. !!! the name is Fawad Afzal ..
I disagree with your statement of beauty not being skin deep. Beauty infact is right at the skin and nowhere else. I also disagree with the notion that beauty lies in the eye of the beholder. Beauty is a very objective term that can be quantified. Endearment however, which people confuse with attraction to beauty, is very subjective. For people gearing up to whip me to my place, answer me this in all honesty, how many people do you know that will call a perfectly bloomed red rose ugly, and how many will call a pile of organic waste beautiful?
We (South Asians) are so pathetic. We look for gori girls, not for good girls. We look for gori girls, not for attractive ones. We look for gori girls, not for educated and enlightened ones. Because of this, our girls feel the need to become gori no matter what. They forget that some of us (especially the younger generations) think that darker girls can be absolutely as gorgeous as fair-skinned ones.
This is sadly something I fight with my parents almost every few weeks since Im very fair and they think its absolutely necessary that my wife should be fair-skinned!
You can change the colour of your skin but not your nature. How about this: “My skin is white but my soul is black.”
@Ema anis people of this subcontinent are idiots the whole world goes to tan themselves to get perfect dusky tanned olive skin, bask in sun to get rid of pale/white complexion and here people use nonsensical whitening agents when the world appreciates us for our natural exoticness and crave it. They won't even look at you twice if you are pale its average walking on road people kind of thing. The same fair indians and Pakistanis apply bronzers and dark shimmer to make them look tanny and sey to stand out in crowd and turn eyes from people and avoid being pale as plague.When Bollywood actress go abroad for awards shows hollywood actors woo and praise deepika, bipasha as ht, desirable, se*y but no such mention for kareena or pale beauties of bollywood they find them ordinary. Having said that no one is right. The whites use tanners and products to look like us, we use whiteness creams to look like them, the asian slit eyed people do surgery to look like rest of of the world seems like no ones happy being who they are.