That’s not ‘fair’

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Time was when digital retouching of models and actresses to make them fairer sparked controversy. Many fingers were pointed at fairness products that associate themselves with a make-believe sense of achievement to convince the consumer.
Now, in a trend reversal of sorts, Deepika Padukone will be turning several shades darker for her film with Rajinikanth. In the meantime, a well-known TV actress is being paid big money to be portrayed much duskier than she actually is. So does this mean dark is finally being accepted as beautiful?
Fashion designer Pria Kataria Puri sees a sign of mindsets changing but believes we are still a long way from falling in love with dark complexion. She says, “Since the time of the Mahabharata, we have been obsessed with fair skin, so things are not going to change overnight. But with more international exposure, the change has begun. As far as our cinema is concerned, it’s high time we get more true to our characters. It’s good that Bollywood is finally breaking the norm of having uniform (fair) skin tone irrespective of one’s real complexion. We even make our heroes look pretty — but it was so refreshing to see Hrithik Roshan with very little makeup in Agneepath.”
But image consultant Chhaya Momaya thinks that cinema can do very little to change our mindsets. “We may be accepting it on screen, but when it comes to our life, we will still want our son to marry a fair girl. I don’t see us changing that primitive mindset anytime soon,” she says.
Farah Khan Ali, however, feels that if a change has to begin, it should begin with cinema. “I hope Bollywood inspires fairness products to drop their silly ads and think of something more meaningful to sell themselves.”
As Pria sees it, change is not so much in the hands of the media as it is in the hands of dusky people themselves. “People who are dark should stop being apologetic and embrace their colour. But it also depends on matters like upbringing. I have a Caucasian fair complexion and my daughter doesn’t but I have never let her feel bad about it and she has turned out to be extremely confident of herself. So once dark people become confident of themselves, people will be forced to change their mindset.”
After all, attitude, like beauty, is skin-deep.