Hi EYD! Today, Eshita discusses the impact of colorism on the Indian and American movie industries, as well as reflects on her own personal insecurities. Colorism is an important topic to discuss - it is one of the first ways that many darker skinned children feel inferior to their lighter skinned peers. We hope you are able to learn from and enjoy her piece!
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As far as I know, we, as Desi girls, have heard our moms telling us to “not go in the sun for too long” and then advising us to apply homemade turmeric masks to “remove” the tan. We have had our fair share of colorist experiences. Thankfully due to social media and Gen-Z bringing awareness to this issue, more people are educated on the history of colorism. India has changed the name of its famously endorsed product: Fair & Lovely to Glow & Lovely. This is a huge step towards our goal of eliminating this ideology. Considering that this brand has thrived on women’s insecurities for decades, I’m so excited for the future reform that will happen regarding colorism and beauty standards.
Today I want to talk about two of my childhood insecurities: being too dark and my culture. These insecurities stemmed from movie industries in India. Weird right? Hear me out. As a first-generation American, from a Telugu-speaking family, I felt out of place because of where I lived, clashes between American and Indian values, and sought acceptance into my community. When there was no one around that was like me, I turned to movies and mainstream media. When I was younger, there was no one except Ravi from Jessie on Disney Channel and Lilly Singh from Youtube.
When American media lacked representation of brown-skinned female, I often found myself watching Bollywood and Tollywood movies but there I saw almost the same thing: extremely fair-skinned actresses.
I'll begin with Bollywood first. Don't get me wrong, I love Bollywood movies, but they do not represent southern India enough. For example, in the movie 2 States, the director cast Alia Bhatt as the Tamilian girl, Ananya. Since Bollywood is a film industry that caters its movies to a national audience and represents all of India. I thought it was unreasonable for the director to choose a North Indian girl to represent a South Indian, (not hating on Alia Bhatt), but it would have been more inclusive to cast a Tamilian girl to play the role.
I also saw something similar in the movie, Bala. Bhumi Pednekar (one of the actresses) played a dark-brown girl named Latika Trivedi, a lawyer who faced colorist remarks and how she dealt with it. Her character was strong and empowering, but Bhumi had to spray a darker foundation all over her body to turn into the character. Again, don’t get me wrong, Bhumi is a wonderful actress who performed very well, but brownfacing is very offensive and racist. It would have been nicer to see a dark-brown actress portray Latika, as it would have made her role more relatable and inspiring to all of us.
Now, onto the South Indian movie industry. I thought that I would have found more actresses that were like me in movies, but it was the same as Bollywood. Fair-skinned females. Seeing this hurt me even more than Bollywood. It sets unrealistically high beauty standards for dark-brown South Indian females, making us feel even more insecure and turning to unhealthy skin treatments for acceptance into our communities. It was discouraging to see fairer-skinned females who weren’t even South Indian, being cast into movies in South Indian movie industries.
In Tollywood, I don't think I ever saw a Telugu actress on screen.
There were many North Indian actresses (ie: Kajal Aggarwal, Taapsee Pannu, Rakul Preet Singh) who came into Tollywood to represent Telugu women. That was upsetting because I watched Telugu movies in hopes to see Telugu women representation, but I saw North Indian women who didn’t know of my culture and language.
These actresses are incredibly talented, and it’s awesome that they choose to work in South Indian movie industries. It just makes me (and other girls) feel very lost and uncomfortable in our own culture. Hopefully, all my Tamilian, Malayali, and Kannada girls can relate. It’s very heartbreaking to see people in our own movie industries turn their backs on us. I hope in the future more women are vocal about this and we get the representation that brown-skinned girls deserve in the theatre space.
I want to put a spotlight on South India for a bit, we are often seen as inferior to North India because we are darker.
Mainstream media has stereotyped us as the darker, uglier, smarter people that eat idli and sambar.
This “darker, uglier” stereotype, I feel, has put an added pressure on South Indian girls to look lighter. Genetically, South Indians, are descendants of the Dravidians, a society of people with a darker complexion. In contrast, North Indians are descendants of Indo-Aryans, a society of people with a lighter complexion.
So any skin lightening cream or skin bleaching treatment cannot change our South Indian complexion. We, as Indians, should strive to represent and include all shades of brown. Especially in movie industries because many of us look up to actresses, actors, and the characters they play, this could help quicken societal reform and leave behind colorism. Let’s bring change. Let’s uplift our brown sisters to embrace their melanin glow. And hopefully, we can see more representation in South Indian movie industries, Bollywood, as well as Hollywood!
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