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The Fair & Lovely Standard Maria Saadat

Last week, I came across a reallyinteresting postatFeministing.com. Entitled, Jessica Simpson and the

Price of Beauty, the piece discussedJessica Simpsons upcoming docu-seriesThe Price of Beauty, as well

as the unfair standards of beauty placed upon women around the world. While Simpsons series will

undoubtedly have its flaws (Feministing noted it may fall into the all too familiar trap of cultural relativism

and Western desire to understand the other), the article caused me to ponder the price of beauty in

Pakistan. I turned to my close friend Maria Saadat, who runs the South Asian beauty blog,Lipstick Masala,

and asked her to weigh in on a timely piece forInternational Womens Day. Below, Maria discusses the

often arbitrary and unfair standard of beauty impressed upon many women in Pakistan:

The latest Bollywood song blared from the speakers and the crowd at my sisters wedding cheered in

delight. As I laughed with my friends and shimmied my hips in time to the music, I was unaware that a

family friends son was observing me from across the room. He had attended the event in order to take a

look at me for a possiblerishta(proposal). I didnt make the cut, however. I wasntgori (fair) enough. It

didnt matter that I was well educated, courteous to others, or that I could cook a m ean chicken karahi.

No, he did not know any of these things about me or even the sound of my voice, for he didnt bother

speaking to me. I was simply cast aside, rejected from afar, solely based on the color of my skin. Six

months later said bachelor was married to his 17-year-old cousin. Yes, she was a child. But, oh, was she

pale!

The general response amongst my friends to this story was, Oh, they must have been backward. Nobody

cares about these things anymore. As much as I would like to believe that is true, this kind of bias is still

prevalent in our society, and not just with our grandparents generation. In the last decade, women in

Pakistan have made a place for themselves independent of their husbands whether in high heels and a

pantsuit or a modest shalwar kameezand chador, they have stormed the workplace as educated television

news anchors, driven politicians, and dynamic business women. But, it seems no matter how many barriers

we break, or how far we women come, our worth is still measured in many circles by how closely we

resemble a blank sheet of printer paper and whether or not we can produce beautiful, milky white babies.

We belong to an age where dark beauties like Rani Mukherjee and Bipasha Basu sizzle on screen, and

fake tanner is sold by the millions in the U.S. so that lighter-skinned ladies can achieve the bronzed glow

most of us Pakistanis are born with. The whole world is trying to go darker, yet our society is still hung up

on what products or methods to use to become just a few shades paler. Who do we blame for this? Should

we condemn advertisers hawking skin-lightening products to the working classes with the promise that

success will come with fair skin? Should we point fingers at our great grandparents who passed their own

prejudices down to the younger generations?

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The truth is, the blame does not lie solely with the ads for Fair and Lovely cream or obnoxious aunties

admonishing us for sitting out in the sun for too long. It lies with us. We ourselves are feeding into

preconceived notions about what we should look like. How many of us flip through the Daily Times Sunday

magazine? As a relatively forward thinking publication, they share delicioustidbits such as how to

wear rednail polish to make ones hands look fairer. We skim through such articles without a thought, but

the words are embedded into our subconscious. A few days later, we find ourselves at the nearest beauty

salon getting a red manicure. There, while our nails are being buffed and shaped, we are offered the newest

body polishing treatment that will bring a neat (read: FAIR) look to our skin. And we say, sure, why

not?

I was blessed with a beautiful niece a few months ago. The first question asked was not is she healthy?

but rather, Rang kaisa hai? (What is her complexion like?). When it was discovered that she didnt have

the fair coloring of her mother, our family was advised to rub her skin with besan so that her skin would

become saaf(clean). Is this what it has come down to? Torturing a newborns fragile skin with gram flour in

the hopes that her color will change?

This is why I say NO. NO to the body polishing, NO to the mothers inspecting me for their sons, and NO to

the magazines that tell us we should be something that were not. I will not allow my niece to grow up in a

world where she is conscious of what shade of brown her skin is. Yes, I know it sounds like a cheesy anti-

drug campaign. But, the truth is, this obsession with fair vs. dark is an addiction, especially when one

spends thousands of rupees on it! And I refuse to let myself succumb to it. I may offend people by how I tan

my skin in the summer or how much bronzer I use, but ultimately I choose to be defined by who I am, not

what color I am. So, put down the whitening creams and toss out the trashy magazines and embrace your

color, whether fair or dark. Who knows, maybe well start a new trend.