Fair and Lovely

Watching Bollywood films and TV commercials here is always amusing. Beauty is determined by your skin color. The "fairness" craze here is above and beyond. Every Bollywood actress and women in commercials are fair, however this population probably represents only a fraction of the Indian population. Yet, one would think all Indians look fair. Every other commercial has some air brushed women selling a fairness skin product and usually the darker people are the servants or rickshaw drivers. Coming here often gives me a complex.. is it wrong to be dark? When I got back from Thailand my whole family said "Oh my Margee you got so dark". It's like I caught some type of disease. Meanwhile, back in the states some pay to get tan. I tell them this and they shake their heads in disbelief. In the states, most commercials have relatively thin women in commericals and thin actresses as well. These commercials and movies are what most woman see as being the standard or the norm.

Dove recently launched a campaign for real beauty. The commercials they have show real women, tall, overweight, skinny, white, black, asian, everything. I think it's a great campaign to promote individuality. My hopes is that many women that do have the "darkness" complex realize it's what's on the inside that counts.