The Changing Identity Of Indian Women
Like many other Indian women, I grew up with media that told me that I wasn’t pretty enough because I wasn’t white enough. Many Indian women couldn’t comprehend the idea of feeling beautiful in their brown bodies. I was fortunate enough to be raised by a mother who always reminded me that my skin colour is beautiful and it reminds me of my roots, sadly, not many Indian women grew up this way. Being my skin tone is now very much a part of the identity of many Indian women, but it wasn’t always this way.
Colourism — is the preference of lighter skin tones over darker skin tones. India, like many other countries have a long history of colourism. Under British colonialism, lighter skin Indians were given preference over their darker counterparts and they were hired more frequently for higher level jobs.
Many years later, colourism was still persistent in India especially during the early-2000s. This is also when many skin-lightening creams like Fair and Lovely came to the market. They used television advertisements to remind people of the advantages of being lighter-skin. Fair and Lovely claimed to be the first fairness cream with 100% safe ingredients.
They produced atrocities like these:
Unfortunately, brands like Fair and Lovely were extremely popular in India. They attached symbols of success with being lighter-skinned. Advertisements were made to produce commodity signs to invite imaginative interpretations from the viewers. The ad above, for example showed how a girl went from being sad and unsuccessful, become happier after getting lighter by using Fair and Lovely. These ads used colourism to sell the idea that ‘whiter is better’ by tying into the insecurities of Indian women. There were already prejudices in India that were rooted in colourism, brands like Fair and Lovely capitalised on this.
Beauty Advertisements in Indian media would predominantly promote fairness products and their models were always white-skinned foreign models. These ads would promote a lifestyle that could only be achieved by the use of their fairness creams.
Moreover, Fair and Lovely ads made strong use of ‘before and after’ images, where the ‘before’ image depicted a model who couldn’t achieve what she wanted while the ‘after’ images depict models who look happy, confident, and successful.
Advertisements like these played an important role in an Indian woman’s identity. A study done to understand the core values in Indian women revealed that Indian women valued the idea of being ‘competent’. This competency involved being successful and independent at work. Fair and Lovely ads sold the idea that if you want to be successful, you had to be light-skinned.
It was always heart-breaking, watching my friends use skin-lightening creams, wanting to be fairer because they didn’t feel pretty enough. Traditional Indian media, especially beauty advertisements were to be blamed.
Beauty ads like that of Fair and Lovely garnered a strong push back from various communities of women in India. Brinda Karat, general secretary AIDWC (All India Democratic Women’s Congress) claimed the ads were “racist”. She was involved in the AIDWC campaign which culminated in the Indian government banning two Fair & Lovely advertisements.
These ads played a crucial role in defining who we were as Indian women. They told us that if we didn’t appeal to a certain standard of beauty, we wouldn’t be able to achieve the level of success we were aspiring towards.
These notions are now being challenged on platforms like Instagram.
One such campaign was #unfairandlovely. Two students from the University of Austin started the campaign in 2016 where they encouraged South Asian women to share photos of themselves. Their main goal was to challenge notions of colourism and the under-representation of women of colour in media.
This campaign gathered much support from South Asian communities, especially from Indian expatriats.
While traditional advertisements appealed to a set of prejudices by ‘seducing’ the careerist, consumerist and aesthetic desires of educated young Indian women, Instagram channels like @theindianfeminist, @hatecopy, @brownbody and @desifinesse challenge these ideas and bring light to the prevalent colourism issues that exist in India.
Specifically, channels like @desifinesse play a crucial role in redefining what it means to be an Indian woman. These channels use symbols in the form of Indian jewelry and clothes to communicate our roots while challenging narratives that have existed for so long. Baudrillard explained the importance of signs for commodity exchange and social difference. Fair and Lovely ads use signs of success and competence to encourage the sale of their fairness creams. Whereas, these channels use these symbols to bring light to social differences while encouraging social change. Desifinesse has been in the front-line for sharing illustrations, photographs and stories of women who were negatively impacted by colourism.
This channel, like many others have been working towards challenging prejudices and pre-defined notions of what it means to be an Indian woman. They highlight key struggles and issues that still persist within our society.
Through the use of story-telling and reinventing narratives, it is seen that these channels are working towards redefining South Asian women. There is no more a set identity that we have to aspire towards, instead these channels focus on individuality and being part of a sisterhood of strong independent women.
It feels really wholesome being part of this sisterhood who challenge any notions that tell us that we aren’t good enough because of our skin colour. As an adult, my skin colour still reminds me of my roots and makes me feel part of the resilient and supportive sisterhood of Indian women, even while living in Australia.
