Thinking About Beauty

A Philosopher’s View

By Ajoy Varghese | A Dark is Beautiful Supporter

Humans not only perceive beauty, but also have the unique ability to describe it and to judge it.

The “Dark is Beautiful” campaign has an underlying assumption— that Beauty exists! It is a clear reference to the ubiquitous existence of beauty in our world. It is also a bold challenge to social attempts to fracture beauty. One attempt to do so is by pitting one skin colour against another. The campaign asserts that that beauty is not contained in one colour but in many— individually and together. The campaign also asserts that beauty is not skin deep.

Prior to the Dark is Beautiful campaign, when was the last time you actually heard a public debate on beauty? Not likely that you did. Not surprising, either. It’s easier to use a TV ad to assault your senses than to present a logical argument to challenge your reason. 

I recently heard a male celebrity protest that he had every right to choose his skin colour. How can you argue with that? Except that when a personal preference is advertised as a public good, it has made itself a subject of public scrutiny and judgment. So, if a celebrity says that endorsing a product is his right, then the public has an equal right (and I think, an obligation) to judge it. Else, his personal preference must be parked within the confines of his own thinking.

Dear Malaysia, Will You Dare to Be Colour Blind?

By Sai Tharshini Varathan | A Dark is Beautiful Campaigner

I come from the wonderful and multicultural land of Malaysia. Malaysia is filled with diverse people that are generally friendly. But often, I get to hear a lot of painfully discriminatory comments because of my skin colour, I used to feel hurt and wondered what was so wrong in being dark? 

I was once told to go to the temple and pray for a new face; to ask the Goddess for a better and fairer complexion. Of everything I have been told about my skin colour, this was the comment that really hurt.

The Old Has Gone, The New Has Come!

By Kavitha Emmanuel | Founder and Director of WOW

It’s amazing to see how the Dark is Beautiful Campaign has gone viral. The WOW team was taken by storm. We are grateful to all our supporters for standing up with us to address this age-old belief that ‘fair alone is beautiful’.

Yes, it was our initiative BUT it has now become YOUR campaign.

Colour Me Bright Red, Emerald Green, Orange, and Pink

By Sudha Menon | A Dark is Beautiful Campaigner

If you have grown up in a dark brown skin, like I have, you have possible heard this sentence many times in your life: " She is dark but smart", " She is not dark, just dusky. And, very intelligent". "She is nice. A little dark, but nice..."

I grew up in an age when being dark was a horrible fate. Being dark meant either being noticed because of your dark colour or worse still, ignored or neglected to such a point that you begin to feel you don't exist. That people can't see you.

 Growing up, I remember the best years of my childhood were spent in clothes that were shades of either grey or brown so that I felt I was a mouse that disappeared into the background. Dark people could not carry reds, blues and greens was the thought back then but every time loving family members brought me yet another grey or brown dress for my birthday, my heart broke a little more.

If you look at photographs from my childhood you can spot me immediately. I am the girl in the corner of the frame, angry eyes staring down the photographer, almost willing him to make me look lovely, despite the drabness of my clothes.  In many ways , I think the colourlessness of my clothes made affected my personality for a long time. I was a shy kid with few friends and I became a rebel to boot, possibly to get some attention for myself. 

Shah Rukh Khan, Let's Be Fair

By Pamposh Dhar | Dark is Beautiful campaigner



We are bombarded by print ads and TV commercials all day long. So much so that we hardly pay heed to them any more. But when “King Khan” himself shows up on the TV screen in our home, we sit up and take notice. He is India’s most popular star, the heart-throb of millions. In TV interviews, and even in most of his films, he comes across as a down-to-earth, sensitive man. We love him for that.

But now, with the Fair and Handsome commercial he is making some of us very uncomfortable. A few friends find my views objectionable. Mostly this seems to stem from the feeling that SRK is a superstar, someone we adore, and therefore someone we cannot possibly find fault with or give advice to. Our love for SRK inhibits us from criticizing him, but let’s face it – the Fair and Handsome commercial sends a clear message that to be handsome or successful you must be fair. 

Fair & Handsome, Meet Dark & Confident

A chat with David Livingstone

Sales pitches for fairness products suggest that a man needs to lighten up to get the job, to get the girl, to get more out of life. Twenty-nine year-old David Livingstone says that’s “hideous,” and in this interview with Dark is Beautiful, he offers his own take on what it means to be fair.

Surviving Discrimination: The Mary Smrutha Paul Photo Story

By Mary Smrutha Paul | An UNfair & Beautiful contributor

I've endured a lot when I was younger and in school. While studying in an International school, I was made fun by my classmates. I'm skinny and dark, and adopted. I used to be laughed at all the time. The boys used to say that I looked like a Somalian refugee. I understand they were pre-teens and were just bullying girls, but that affected me a lot.

Be Yourself: Be Dark, Be Beautiful

By Lydia Durairaj

Have you witnessed any of these statements or realities around you:
• Buying Double-whitening-action cream to get fair in three days?
• Not casting fair-skinned actors to play the role of a housemaid, the evil nemesis, or the outcast?
• Families looking out for a ‘fair bride’?
• Making pregnant mothers bathe in milk and saffron and eating lots of nuts so that the child is born with fair skin; and if that doesn’t work, then buying the double-whitening-action cream?

These ideologies have not changed since the days of our grandmothers. For generations now we have been saturating in the belief that dark skin is undesirable – to the point where we, consciously, start to discriminate and create divides between the fair and dark skinned people.

Even in the 21st century, when issues like poverty, hunger, and war are ravaging our lands, we have contributed to the booming half-billion-dollar skin whitening industry.

Advertisers play on our insecurities and market products that endorse discriminatory philosophies

Common Clay

A haiku by Stacy Wiebe
We're not fashioned from

diamonds or opals, but clay
warm with divine breath.

 I snapped this photo of my son participating in a

hands-on sculpting activity at Government Museum, Chennai.

On Raising Children

By Kavitha Emmanuel | Director, WOW

The issue of skin colour goes deeper than we would like to admit. It is actually more than just ‘skin’ deep; it is in our hearts. How does this bias against people of a darker skin colour, really affect the way we live and relate to others? 

I have a daughter who is 5 years old. I would like to describe her skin colour as 'golden brown'. She is my honey bunch. My hope and dream for her is that she will grow up believing that she is beautiful just the way she is. In South India, she probably does not fall in the category of being dark-skinned, but neither is she really fair. 

I am, at the moment, considering adopting a child. I have asked myself this question, “What is my preference, in terms of skin colour, for the child I would like to adopt?"  My first thoughts were that he or she should be of a similar skin tone to that of our daughter. I couldn't bear the thought of one of them being darker than the other and have people make comparisons or comments that would be hurtful to them. I would not want them, in turn, to compare themselves to each other and, perhaps, echo the unfortunate but common opinion that the lighter one is better. I do empathize with parents who are faced with this situation. As parents we want the best for our children. 

We live in a world where we suffer discrimination in various aspects of life - rich against the poor, upper caste against the lower caste, men against women. We discriminate on the basis of religion, profession, designation, status and SKIN COLOUR! Let's wake up to a new world where we spread love and acceptance rather than prejudice or bias.

If I adopt a child and he or she is dark-skinned, I will do all I can to let my children know how beautiful they are. I will teach both my children to rise above the limitations that the world might try to place on them because of skin colour. We need to teach our children to soar!

An ideal Indian woman?

By Kavitha Emmanuel | Director, WOW

We often conclude that our worth is based on what we do or how we look. And for many of us, especially women, what we see in the mirror – or what we think we see in the mirror – shapes much of our identity. Added to these notions are our society’s norms on how a girl or a woman should look and behave. The Media sends us confusing messages about who we are and what we should look like often capitalizing on the norms that are already found in our society.

An ideal Indian woman! Who is she? She is tall, slim, with well defined features and FAIR!  

What do we read when we open the matrimonial sections of our newspapers? Have you ever tried to count the number of ‘fairness’ advertisements that you are exposed to on television everyday? It seems the marketing universe would have us believe that the majority of Indian girls and women need to lighten up!

Based on the Global Village Theory, if we were to shrink the whole world into a village of 100 people, 70 of us would be colored! And we are a nation made of up people with different shades and colours of skin – from yellow to light brown and darker shades of brown. To set ‘fair’ as the norm of beauty is so ‘Un-Fair.’

The Dark is Beautiful campaign is all about spreading the message that beauty is beyond colour. We are all citizens of one nation– tall or short , men or women, children or adults, Fair or Dark. Why make a big deal about skin colour when you are beautiful just the way you are?

Is it possible for us to shed our bias against dark skin and give everyone a ‘fair chance’ to be accepted, loved and represented in all walks of life?

Yes, it is possible!

Winning poem entry in the 2009 contest

Good Mothers by Saudha Kasim

Good mothers obey the old crones who hang
By the windowsills, staring into low-ceilinged, dark rooms.
Toothless and ashen-skinned, they suggest remedies:
Rose water, milk, honey, jasmine, powdery sandalwood.

Good mothers, pregnant and blooming, bathe in all that and
Listen to their mothers echo the interfering old crones.
The ones who suggest bleaching agents
Dredged from the earth and plucked from trees.

Good mothers rub gold rings in honey (vigorously)
And put the gold-flecked syrup drop by little drop
In their newborn’s mouth.
My mother, I guess, was not good.

She didn’t burn cattle skulls and catch the moon
In her bedtime glass of milk. She drank 7 Up and ate
Sardines with relish, burnt frankincense and read up
On Vodka and Cognac brands in Kala Kaumudi.

My mother didn’t stare at snow, but watched Ronald Reagan,
Stetson on his head and mounted on a mustang, chase villains
In black and white cowboy movies subtitled in Arabic.
My mother was not surprised at my burnt bronze skin.

My mother, unlike good mothers, didn’t cover me in Cuticura.
She didn’t want me paraded in whiteface, the Keralite Kabuki artiste.
She kissed my bronze toes and admired my unfair skin.
My mother sneers at whitening unguents and loves my dark brow.

My mother, stuck in a desert town, blew raspberries at
The old crones who gave good mothers white chicken feathers.
You couldn’t be anyone else, she whispered in my ear,
Black, brown, red, yellow.

My mother didn’t name me after Ayesha, the fairest consort.
Instead, she gave me the name of the Abyssinian widow.
Blackness, she says, it means blackness.
My mother gave me the gift of colour.

About the Author:

Saudha Kasim studied architecture but decided to leave the designing and construction of houses and office towers to people who know what they are doing. She now works as a graphic designer and content writer in Bangalore, India.

"As for why I chose to enter the contest: Like most women in India I experienced the prejudice of not being 'fair or wheatish' in complexion. As a child I heard catty remarks from neighbours and relatives who couldn't understand why I was so much more darker than my mother or sister. My mother didn't really care and taught me not to care - though those lessons were hard to learn and accept for a long time. But as I have grown older I have grown more comfortable in my skin. And my name does mean 'blackness' quite literally in Arabic. And I have grown to love it over the years as well."