Skin lightening is a part of Miss India pageant regimen

India’s skin-color obsession drives a whitening-cream market valued at $432M in 2010. Beauty queens appear in skin-whitening advertisements; the pursuit of fair skin is pervasive, particularly in pageants. Chaudhry points to cultural anthropologist Susan Runkle, who followed contestants preparing for the 2003 Miss India pageant. Skin-lightening was part of the regimen:

I sat in on weekly individual sessions that dermatologist Dr. Jamuna Pai held with the contestants in order to examine their skin. Every single one of the young women was taking some sort of medication to alter her skin, particularly in colour, in the training programme in 2003. In a disturbingly casual manner, Dr. Pai emphasized the need for all the contestants to bleach their skin by prescribing the peeling agent Retin-A as well as glycolic acid and, in the case of isolated dark patches, a laser treatment.

Runkle’s subjects recognized that India’s fair-skin obsession didn’t match international ideals:

When I asked Dr. Pai, who trained as a plastic surgeon in London, why fair skin was such a concern at the pageant, she offered the following explanation. “Fair skin is really an obsession with us, it’s a fixation. Even with the fairest of the fair, they feel they want to be fairer. It isn’t important anymore, because the international winners are getting darker and darker.You wouldn’t notice our obsession, because you have such beautiful white skin, but I feel it’s ingrained in us. When an Indian man looks for a bride, he wants one who is tall, fair and slim, and fairer people always get jobs first. Today, this is being disproved because of the success internationally of dark-skinned models, but we still lighten their skin here because it gives the girls extra confidence when they go abroad.”

Invoking Indian-American celebrities like Mindy Kaling, Rangappa argued, “For all the racist commentary following Davuluri’s win at Miss America, the fact remains that America is way ahead of India in celebrating a realistic ideal of Indian beauty.”

I was confused by this as well. Your skin will get lighter using these things because your skin cells turn over rapidly and so you will lose any tan your skin may have (you also have to use really good sunscreen because retin A makes you very susceptible to sun damage /skin cancer) but it will never make you fairer than what your skin would naturally be with no tan. They aren’t bleaching agents. Underlying point is true though, too many people still obsessed with fair skin.

I also want to add one point here, most people misunderstand skin lightening as skin whitening, as I did in sometime back. I went to a dermatologist and she explained what exactly it is. If you have any pigmentation problem due to aging or sun tan, those can be reduced with the latest laser treatment procedures. Skin whitening is a misconception. Skin doctors strongly rule out the possibility of fading one's complexion beyond the natural one. I have gone through the below post, which is from a dermatologist's words, to understand better about it, hope others find it useful who still believes this misconception.

So skin lightening is basically tan removal treatment and skin whitening is not possible according to doctors. That's what you mean??

Originally posted by: Sophia9848

I also want to add one point here, most people misunderstand skin lightening as skin whitening, as I did in sometime back. I went to a dermatologist and she explained what exactly it is. If you have any pigmentation problem due to aging or sun tan, those can be reduced with the latest laser treatment procedures. Skin whitening is a misconception. Skin doctors strongly rule out the possibility of fading one's complexion beyond the natural one. I have gone through the below post, which is from a dermatologist's words, to understand better about it, hope others find it useful who still believes this misconception.

Well doing 100's of surgeries and beauty treatments are common for beauty pageants. Long back i had read that there is a company in Venezuela which select promising young girls, train them, get them beautified (cosmetic surgeries etc) and make them enter their beauty pageants and later compete in Miss World and Miss universe pageants.....

Everything happens World wide... Every country has similar issues, but only India is always called out and bashed for it...

That idiot Trump even bashed India for GPGP when there is proof that India is nowhere involved in it....

I can understand foreign media as most are jealous of India and want us to remain down, but at least we should stop generalizing things and bashing our own country just to look cool...