Milk Chocolate or Dark..Whats Yo Flavor?

I met this Desi guy at a dinner party and he started telling me about his ideal girl. He has this thing for mocha colored girls. He explained that they are much more beautiful then their darker versions and he likes them with light eyes and hair. Hmmm..is he in the closet about who he'd rather be dating or what? Well, talking to him got me thinking about the fixation over skin color in our society.

In East Indian culture, the lighter you are the better. Watch any Bollywood movie, and you'll notice that the main actress is light skinned and the dancers around her are darker and less atrractive. If you're in the desi dating scene and go on any dating sites, putting on your profile that you are "fair" or "very fair" increases your value (though, I've seen some of those pictures where they are apparently "very fair" and they actually look a little Cajun to me! Guess that speaks volumes about what people will say just to be considered attractive) In India, Vico Tumeric Paste has been sold for decades, which is supposed to help make your skin "fairer and lovelier".

Ashwairya Rai has been long touted as being the "most beautiful woman in the world". Are we attracted to her more since she looks so uncharacteristically non-desi? She has green eyes, a small, straight nose, light dyed, straight hair and could easily be mistaken for another ethnicity. I'm not saying she's not beautiful, but I do question if it has something to do with the consensus within our society, that the Western beauty ideal is more attractive. Look at most Indian girls today and a lot of them are wearing colored contacts and light dyed hair. Are we Desi gals going away from our own natural beauty so that we look more North American and acceptable? Again, no diss to any girls out there or to say we shouldn't do it. I myself, have highlighted my hair in the past. Its just something for us to think about.

Personally, I can see how my own skin color has been viewed by our society. I'm fair skinned, and one year I went on a trip and ended up getting very tan (hey, there was beach and what had to be done, HAD to be done!). I came back and was going to go to a wedding. But before I went, some Aunties came over to our house and flippantly told me, that if I want any boy to look at me, I'll have to bleach my skin. Ya, okay..I'm going to just whip out the Jolen Bleach and become Snow White, just so that the men will come a lookin'? Fuggettaboutit! I'm not doing anything I don't believe in. And I didn't. Besides that, any man who's going to judge me based on my skin color is definitely one I'd rather not get to know.

I'm an analytical person, so the more I thought about this topic, the more I wondered..Where did these views actually originate? From my research, I found that the "color bar" for beauty, exists in most non-white cultures. There's usually a hierarchy where the lightest skinned women are thought to have the highest status and be the most beautiful, while the darker colored gals are at the lowest ranks with beauty and apparent value.

The skin color stigma developed from racist ideologies back in the day, where negative traits were given to certain physical characteristics. The darker pigmented people (Africans, Indians etc) were thought to be ignorant, dangerous, savage and primitive. Those ideas flowed from the Western world outwards. And now in 2005, its sad that so many people of our own culture judge each other based on skin color. Our views on whats attractive or not, could be said to be born from racism but so many of us just accept these ingrained ideas on beauty, as what they are, rather than examining them. This is why its so important to question yourself. You always have to ask if what you do or say comes from your own beliefs or someone else's. Otherwise, you're just following the pack..blindly.

As for my own preferences..Truthfully, I've been attracted to guys who are light and dark (hey, chocolate is chocolate no matter what shade!), plus guys of other races are pretty darn hot too.

Maybe this post will get you thinking about your own views on Beauty. Are you more attracted to darker skinned or lighter skinned people? And if so, WHY?

I truly hope that one day, skin color (whatever shade that may be) can be celebrated instead of deplored. Change starts with one and I hope it will start with you.

And in the infamous words of Oil of Olay.."Love The Skin You're In"
(I should get paid for the shameless plug here! lol)