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30/05/2019
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Participants at the Miss India East 2019 event in Kolkata CREDIT: NURPHOTO
Saptarshi Ray, delhi 30 MAY 2019 • 11:42AM
A picture of the finalists in the Miss India beauty pageant has reignited accusations that the country - and especially its beauty industry and media - is obsessed with fair skin.
A newspaper recently published a collage of all 30 contestants selected for the Femina Miss India pageant 2019, with observers saying the light-hued, long-haired women were practically interchangeable.
A Twitter user shared the image, from the Times of India, and asked: “What is wrong with this picture?”
What is wrong with this picture? pic.twitter.com/61B23aYFr6
— Sameer Sewak (@Naa_Cheese) May 28, 2019
As others pointed out, one could swap around all 30 pictures and no one would be able to tell the difference.
In fact, each of these women perfectly fit into the conventional notion of beauty, many said - tall, fair, straight hair, thin and “endowed with a collar bone”.
Many emphasised how these beauty pageants were imposing impossible beauty standards for women around the world. For young impressionable minds, this could be harmful.
India has tussled with the debate over lighter skin equalling beauty many times before. Socially, fair skin is often seen as a mark of higher caste and seen as more desirable for prospective spouses and producing fairer children.
Magazines and film studios have regularly been criticised for promoting the idea that dark skin is less desirable - and this has often been illustrated by beauty pageants, both domestic and global.
Light skin tones have long dominated the beauty pageant CREDIT: AFP
India has produced six Miss World’s and two Miss Universes - many of whom went on to become Bollywood stars.
The bulk of the triumphs came in the mid 1990s to early 2000s and organisers were accused of aiding cosmetics firms expand in India via these victories.
Ever since the 1970s, when Fair and Lovely - India's first fairness cream - was introduced, skin whitening cosmetics have been among the highest selling in the country and, over time, top Bollywood actors and actresses have appeared on billboards and TV adverts to help sell them.
In 2014, the Advertising Standards Council of India (ASCI), a self-regulating advertising body, set guidelines over depicting people with darker skin colour as "unattractive, unhappy, depressed or concerned", but the underlying prejudice still remains among much of Indian society.
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