Bengaluru: A casual conversation about arranged marriage suddenly became dramatic. The mood of the gathering became sombre, when Aditi started to cry, narrating some of her very humiliating experiences. Aditi Khanna is copy Editor with a leading daily-she is beautiful, educated and independent. But that’s not enough for bride seekers, she says. “ I have been rejected by may families because of my skin tone. They all want fair and beautiful. We are conditioned to look at beauty in a certain way. I have also been suggested by many to go for facials and bleaches that pale your complexion. I feel so small and inadequate now.” It is scary to even imagine what girls with darker skin tone go through in villages, small towns-or the ones coming from not so liberal, aware families.

A campaign called Dark is Beautiful saw Nandita Das spearheading it a few years back did much to raise awareness, and draw attention to the unjust effects of colour bias, as well as celebrate beauty and diversity of all skin tones. It is not new for us to laud a dusky model or an actress for making a breakthrough into this glamorous industry despite her shortcoming-her dark skin tone.

It is usual for them to go through a transformation to become more attractive-white or light skinned. No wonder, our stars endorse Fair and lovely products, reinforcing societal attitudes towards dark skinned. “My grandma went into a tizzy seeing me, a dark skinned baby girl, asked my father to be prepared to face harassment marrying me off. Mindless advertisements propagating set standards of beauty are only making it worse. We are extremely racial as a nation,” says Rakhi Sinha, Admin in Fortis Hospital. Adding, “We are made to believe that fair skinned are more confident and hopeful.” Actress Nandita Das had observed, “Now the insecurities of men are also surfacing with equal number of fairness products for them. Such pressure and so little public debate around it!”