fairness

hi everyone, in one of my classes im having a discussion about whether fairness of complexion plays a huge role for girls in our society today concerning marriage. Im not too familiar whether it exists or not. what are your opinion on it?

one of the newest serials that is starting on ZEE is called Saat Phere. here is an article i found about it:

Source: http://indiantelevision.com/release/y2k5/oct/octrel14.htm

About Saat Phere:

Despite being revered as goddesses and having our ancient history peppered with women who were great leaders and scholars, its no secret that in modern times, the various biases and prejudices faced by Indian women are more often ignored than addressed. One of the most baseless yet damning of these biases is the overriding pre-eminence of fairness, or a fair complexion. By the logic of antonym, dark skin is till today considered one of a woman's biggest disadvantage; almost a curse.

Saat Phere is one such story of prejudices, biases and the journey of one woman from darkness (almost literally) to light. Saloni is an average (read: dark) Indian girl with an exceptional talent. But the shade of her melanin over-rides all her attributes. In a society where the girl's worth is measured by how deep her spouse's pockets are, being dark is generally considered a hindrance in finding a well-to-do groom.

"Who is going to marry you?" is a common refrain when a dark girl thinks of marriage. Saloni is no exception to this and spends her youth thinking that no one will ever marry her. But even when she does end up marrying someone, it all goes horribly wrong and therein she begins her journey to discover herself and her true potential despite all odds and blind myths

Great topic .It is so sad but true . We Indians are very racist . Its a shame , but true . If you open any Indian newspaper- read matrimonial section and you see that people are specifying looking for a fair complexion girl .....often for their very dark complexioned boy . It is very sad that they judge you by your colour rather than nature & personality . Also the number of advertisements on Tele for becoming gora show how people are crazy about these products . The Indian market is swamped with these products .

Another thing , we are told as kids not to stay out in sun to avoid a tan ...........as if that tanned colour is bad !!

And most sad part i have seen living in the U.S , Indians are usually hostile towards African Americans . We make racist comments without getting to now them well .This again shows are attitude towards colour . With this attitude we demand a gori girl for our not so gora boy !!

Originally posted by: indygirl

Great topic .It is so sad but true . We Indians are very racist . Its a shame , but true . If you open any Indian newspaper- read matrimonial section and you see that people are specifying looking for a fair complexion girl .....often for their very dark complexioned boy . It is very sad that they judge you by your colour rather than nature & personality . Also the number of advertisements on Tele for becoming gora show how people are crazy about these products . The Indian market is swamped with these products .

Another thing , we are told as kids not to stay out in sun to avoid a tan ...........as if that tanned colour is bad !!

And most sad part i have seen living in the U.S , Indians are usually hostile towards African Americans . We make racist comments without getting to now them well .This again shows are attitude towards colour . With this attitude we demand a gori girl for our not so gora boy !!

omg, same thoughts here. sometimes when im reading an indian newspaper, i come to the matrimonial section, and thats like a major requirement for more than half of the requests. on researching it, i read that some parents prefer a fair daughter-in-law for their darker son because then their kids would be fair. thats just unfair. especially when you look at the section for guys, which doesnt put that much emphasis on physical appearance.

one thing that i learned from researching this topic was the term "wheatish complexion", which is also used. My mom says that it means neither too fair or too dark...is that right?

mistystar , yes wheatish complexion means neither fair nor dark . Usually a typical North Indian complexion .

interesting. never knew that. i tried looking it up, but couldnt find a definition, so im assuming its just a made up term to describe a complexion that is in between.

Originally posted by: mistystar

interesting. never knew that. i tried looking it up, but couldnt find a definition, so im assuming its just a made up term to describe a complexion that is in between.

In Indian English - Hinglish there are many words your Webster won't list !!😆😆

LOL oh i definitely agree with that...ahem, but its funny when you dont know a word and you ask someone, and the look they give you makes you know that the word is not...ahem...something you should be saying out loud...they should make a dictionary for those words

Yes that's the requirements by guys n in-laws whn looking for match... nowadays they are after fair complexion, pretty & so so so on when looking for gal. gosh not all are going for inner beauty. Sorry I cant say no more.. but majority are. I seen cases where the groom looks like charcoal and the bride like milk. Wonder what those guys thinks 😆 😆 Some even show of the beauty of their wives in publics nowadays. People are giving preference for beauty and fairer skin and forgetting tht beauty deceives one day :-) Inner beauty remains.

Its sad but true ,even today people look for fair girls for their sons.
And if have a love girl u has a dark complexion,then u will have tough time convencing ur parents n relative. 😭

it is sad but true in the case of south asians. people are so much after the color. as soon as a child is born, their first question is if the child is fair. if not then they start applying turmeric and what not😕. i have seen this trend among indians in US too. they ask their kids not to play outside fearing to get tanned and apply turmeric for first 1-2 years🤢. i don't know what the big deal is? matrimonial columns are funniest. they say fair girls needed for "wheatish" boy. slightly deviating from the color topic, i once read a funny ad in the paper where a guy wrote 'he needs a girl proficient in VC++ (computer language)'. my friends and i couldn't stop laughing at this. we were wondering if that was a matrimonial or job ad.

now coming back to the color topic, i think because of our prejudice all those fairness creams make tons of money. there are ads about how the girl is dark and doesn't get a groom and then she applies 'fair & lovely' and bam!!! the guy likes her now. that ad completely ridicules a woman for two reasons, one because she is rejected because of color, second she becomes fair to attract same guy who rejected her. it's like women have no better thing to do than apply all those crap on their face and then wait for some guy to rescue them🤢.