The mass westernised concept imprinted into our minds the misconception that the skin should be always fair and that fair is the beauty. Almost all the fairness cream companies sell their products through a guaranteed claim of making you white. In the Superstar Rajini starrer Shivaji, we have seen hero mixing all the fairness creams together and applying all over his body. Though in the movie, it has glorified true Rajini, that is the black and handsome Rajini, in real life, there are many people who fall into the trap of misconception that fair is beautiful. A popular FB page ‘Humans of Bombay’ is in a mission to break the fairness misconception with their revolutionary natural posts.
Hema Gopinath Sah, a Mumbai based blogger and the author of the poem kali, talked about her own experience of growing up as a dark-skinned girl in a society obsessed with fairness in a post in ‘Humans of Bombay’.Sah said that while growing up she had been made aware of her colour through comments like ‘work on your grades, if you could not be the beauty, you would have to be the brains!’.Sah’s beautiful poem kali-which literally means dark went massively viral in the social media in April. Her new FB post talks about the discrimination faced by dark-skinned people and the incident which led her to write kali. Smiling beautifully Sah said that maybe it was time to stop worrying about how fair they looked, and start focussing on just ‘being’ fair to those around us..no matter what colour their skin was.
Hema Gopinath Sah’s full post
https://www.facebook.com/humansofbombay/photos/a.188058468069805.1073741828.188056068070045/827362007472778/?type=3&theater
The comment section of the post has been filled with various instances of colour bias experienced by many. The post has been shared over 3000 times on Facebook and garnered hundreds of responses.
Read Sah’s poem Kali below
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10156041221060708&set=a.10152307583165708.1073741826.653345707&type=3&theater
Social media protests against the ‘fairness’ theory are not new. Last year in April, Bollywood actor Abhay Deol slammed fairness cream advertisements. A powerful piece of spoken word poetry titled “A Browngirl’s Guide to Beauty” was published and became viral just a few months later.
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