Skin Tone Perception in the Middle East and India

Anisha Patel

I am a sophomore at Rutgers University, studying Finance and Business Analytics and Information Technology. I am very passionate about cultural immersion traveling and plan on traveling to India this winter break to help educate delinquent children in math and English. I hope to one day work at a non-profit organization in helping developing nations.

I was born in 1997 to a mother who worked three jobs and a father who was studying to get his Master’s degree at NJIT while working a full time job. When I was born, my mother spent exactly six months with me before she had to send me to India to live with my grandparents. My mother told me that before I left, I had the purest, lightest skin that she had ever seen, but upon my return, my skin tone had darkened under the intense Indian sun to shades much darker than anyone else in my family.

Growing up in an Indian family in a town that is for the most part White, my skin tone has always been a sort of anomaly. At home, or in the midst of my Indian friends and their families, my skin tone is something that I am ashamed of. It makes me feel as though I am not as beautiful as my lighter skinned Indian friends, as if I cannot compare to them because of the pigment of my skin in comparison to theirs. Many times, my friends and even my own brother would make fun of my skin tone, telling me that I may have pretty eyes or hair but that my skin tone would forever mar everything else. Even my mother, by buying me skin lightening creams and bleaches and makeup that was always shades too light for me, has unknowingly led me to believe that my skin tone is an imperfection.

In school, however, my white friends were always envious of my skin tone. Perhaps it was because they all had to tan consistently during the summer to come even close to the dark skin that I have, and which only lasted them a few weeks or months into the school year. Or perhaps it was because they craved to be different amongst their peers and my skin tone always made me stand out. Some of my friends at school would tell me that I was lucky to have such “bronzed” skin because it meant that I could wear any color of clothing I wanted without looking washed out. I refused to believe their praises, however, because as far as I was concerned, the “bronze” medal was always given to last place in a race and always came after gold and silver.

I am not the only one who faces these same insecurities and bouts of shame due to complexion. This is an issue that effects almost all women and girls in India and the Middle East. My mom used to tell me that it was because of when the British ruled over India. Just as the British influenced the Middle East during their occupation of Egypt and Palestine, their rule over India which lasted nearly a century left an imprint on Indian social norms which last even till today. One of these social constructs is that in Middle Eastern or Indian cultures, women and girls who are lighter in skin tone are viewed as possessing more beauty than those who are darker. All the major Bollywood actresses share one common trait: they are fair skinned. Most girls growing up in these societies have it ingrained in their minds that being lighter is the be-all-end-all of beauty and that finding husbands is always more difficult for darker-skinned girls. This question of complexion also has a class connotation to it, in that girls who are fair-skinned are considered of higher class, and girls who are darker-skinned are often associated with lower classes because they spend more time outside in the sun.

Whether it is the fault of British colonial rule, or it is a social construct created and forced upon ourselves, it still remains that the image of beauty in the Middle East and India is closely tied to fairness of skin. From lotions and powders and soaps that promise lighter skin such as Fair and Lovely, to routine skin bleaching and facials, to makeup and cosmetic procedures, there are so many aspects of these cultures that are determined to perpetrate this ideology that fair skin is linked to beauty. This ideology, though it may not have been of our own creation, is forever perpetrated by the way we see ourselves and those around. To this day, I have not completely forgiven my mother for sending me off to India and taking away any chance I had of a fairer skin tone. I still regret not being able to see myself as beautiful simply because of the pigment of my skin. And maybe I always will.