16 November 2010

MY FAIR LADY


Yes, you got it right, i am matrimonial. changing my profession,
there is money in matrimony

Matri and money...... See ??

Match maker is old fashioned. i am matrimonialist 

how about matrimonializer ?

Quite a mouthful it is.

Good morning

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One Common factor in the picture above

Fair  Fair   Fair   fair   Fair   Fair   fair, we Indians are obsessed with fair skin



Fair and good looking

Fair around 25

Fair good looking well propertied ...Well propertied ??  deeah me !

Fair professional

pretty slim fair tall,  professionally qualified employed girl ...oops !  Tall order !  some god wants to get married i suppose


what else do we have heeah  ?

Fair Brahmin bride, Brahmin is a high caste Hindu

Fair and beautiful, oh that is simple, thank you

Fair slim preferably in US/Canada, it is getting tougher

9LPA Fair clean habits ? wait wait,

What ?
What is THAT ?  9LPA Fair clean habits ?

i can picture the guy wearing rubber gloves, holding a hose pipe in one hand and a can of disinfectant in the other,  
Hey open your mouth psssssssk, spray the disinfectant in the mouth
hokkay,  you can talk now

What is 9LPA ?
Fair and clean habits !  oh i am exhausted!

please don't ask me about the other code words there, i have no clue myself.

Raghu and Ketu are not two brothers seeking a fair bride. They are stars in some galaxy, something to do with astrology. Don't ask me.  Its a big thing in India. . Astrology is big money here. If i don't make money in matrimony, i'll take up Astro-money. Its easy to cheat people.


What else do we have up there in the picture ??


Divorcee Innocent ?   oh ! innocent... wow, poor chap
If you are too innocent your wife will pack her things very fast and call her mom.
 
Then we have 'God fearing and divorced after 5 month marriage' Perhaps our friend shoved too much of fear of God down his wife's throat. She must have given him a warning.

Any more God and hell  scare,  i am leaving.. and she left.

As i went along,  the matrimonial classifieds were getting more and more absurd. 

And this commercial is even more absurd
please watch this.





please watch a couple of related videos as well.

What they say is,  being fair is the secret of your success. You get your dream job, you get  a handsome prince if you apply their fairness cream.
 Why are these people dumping all the fairness creams on us spending millions on commercials promoting them ?
 Because we want them and we are demanding them.


i don't blame the manufacturers, i don't blame the insensitive and irresponsible advertising agencies. They are here just to make money. Corporates want your money, that is what they are living for.

Give them some money and tell them to make a film on how nice it is to chop the trees. They'll convince you to chop all the trees in your garden and chop all the trees in the world..
They are smart. They are vultures. They feed on your fear, they feed on your weakness, they feed on your obsession of becoming fair, how ever harmful it may be for your skin.
They don't care, They want your money. And you happily give it to them.

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This is Shankari. Gorgeous she is ! She is happy with her skin. No fairness creams for her. Everybody loves her. She has lots of friends. She has a  great job. Without using fairness creams. Qualification  talent and experience counts in getting a job, not how fair you are. 
And This is Selvi, sweet thing, sweet by nature and no fairness creams for her either and She is beautiful 
I wonder how many realise that dark skin is beautiful too


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Fairness creams for women have been around for quite sometime now. You have some celebrities promoting fairness creams for men. Irresponsible people. Big market, big money there. Specially in India.

We are people, a very strange species, other species are fine, they are what they are. We the people, the strange species, don't want to be what we are.


We are white people, black people, yellow people and brown people. We have been intolerant of each other through out our history..


We are Indians, We are Brown people.. No, Gordon Brown is not brown, he is white but he is not Gordon White like Snow white. NO NO NO, Gordon Brown did not become white by using fairness creams, he is originally white, i mean he is Brown, he was born white but became Brown. And he is still Brown.

There is racism within Indians, within fair skinned and within dark skinned. Racism of the worst kind


i told you we are a very strange species. And fairness cream is not an answer to racism..


Even if you get seven dwarfs as your side kicks you can't become a Snow White using fairness creams. 


What are these fairness creams ?


We have a pigment called melanin which makes our skin dark. Less melanin makes the skin lighter. Secretion of Melanin blocks skin cancer and sunburns. Less cases of skin cancer in black and brown people. Fairness cream bleaches the skin, and blocks the secretion of melanin making the skin lighter. not good for the skin.  We in tropical countries are exposed to very harsh sun rays. Using fairness creams we lose the natural protection.



The manufacturers don't disclose the composition of fairness creams. most of them contain steroids, hydroquinone, a bleaching agent, very strong and very harmful for the skin. Some have mercury in them. There is more information on the net. Please check and correct me if i am wrong.
 
Now here is something which is good and bad.


These fairness creams have temporary effect. Which is good. If you stop using the fairness cream your skin heals itself of its deficiencies and gets back to default setting. Good news.


Bad news is, this temporary effect of fairness creams is good money for the manufacturers. When the skin gets dark again,  we buy another tube, and we keep buying tube after tube making the corporates richer and richer at the cost of your skin. That is not good news.

This is the worst case of attempted cross race jump. i am not talking about athletics.


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i have two cases on my hand. three actually. Two cousins and a friend's wife. One of them is a grand mother. They will kill me if i post their pictures. Their skin specially on the face is patchy. some areas light and some dark. looks hideous. This is due to continuous use of fairness creams for years. Patchy skin is permanent. .


Fairness cream is not an answer to racism. Racism will remain, even if you become fair. Use all the creams on your face,  colour your hair, still you are not upgraded to a different race. You remain brown for ever.

Added later :

This is what i am talking about
please take a look at this dumb commercial. A sad and dark Indian, her friend gives her the fairness cream. You see a complete transformation. Back to the same place and she shows contempt for her friend who gave her the fairness cream. The guy at the counter says, 'foreign passport that side m'aam'. She replies in rustic Punjabi, meaning she is a local not a foreigner.  
This happens to be a spoof as Jyothi pointed out.



You just can't change or alter the genetic structure.

Please be what you are.


All my love


46 comments:

Happy heart said...

Beautiful post...not fair or slim, just radiantly beautiful.

எண்ணங்கள் 13189034291840215795 said...

Good article...

Joe said...

Loved your sense of humour!

Keep writing!

Ruth said...

Oh rauf. What a beautiful, gut-wrenching piece of writing and contemplation. Thank you. I like what Happy heart wrote.

Yes, we are what we are genetically. So full and precious, in every shade.

monsoon dreams said...

Raufee,
Beauty is being what you are-white,brown,yellow or black.But the real beauty is in how you behave.Loved the post,Raufee.Glad to know people like you exist. I never buy or use such stuff though I am still ugly :-)
btw,I love dark guys(Will Smith,Sreenivasan,Denzel Washington).That doesnt mean I hate others(I love Elvis,Enrique,Marc Anthony).Just that I feel dark skinned are more macho.

rauf said...

Thank you HAPPY HEART, i just want to radiate some warning in my blog or spread the infection of awareness. Both are not pleasant Happy heart. Welcome to Daylight Again

rauf said...

PYANAMUM YENNANGALUM, i can read and write Tamil but i am not good at it. Thank you and welcome to Daylight Again.

rauf said...

JOE, This is a serious issue, and it is my duty to get the message across without hurting without annoying the readers. So i make it little funny. Readers get annoyed nonetheless. Welcome to Daylight Again.

rauf said...

Thank you RUTH, you'll see exploitation everywhere. There are people who take advantage of wrongly placed obsessions and weaknesses.

rauf said...

You have devoted your time and energy in the service of the needy and the unfortunate with no reward MONSOON DREAMS and you have sacrificed a lot in your life. That makes you a beautiful person.
i like Micheal Holding Brian Laura Dennis Lillee David Gower

monsoon dreams said...

So u confirm my belief that I am otherwise ugly! ;-)
just kidding,Raufee.
Life is so short and these things dont really matter.Thanks for ur kind words,but I am not sure if I deserve them.
EEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

rauf said...

KUTTA, what ? you read things i have not written. i have already confirmed many times that you are unfit for Indian cricket team. you drop too many catches and because of you we have lost many matches.

monsoon dreams said...

ha ha!just wanted to irritate u,dee.

freefalling said...

What about the orange people?
You forgot the orange people.
In Australia, we are mad for fake tan.
Lotions, powders, sprays and special spray tan booths.
The only problem is the people who use them all end up looking orange!
Like oompa loompas from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.
You're right - we humans are crazy!!!

Linda Sue said...

All is vanity and vexation of spirit- How silly we are- I am so fair that I am very close to transparent- If I stand in the sunshine or against the snow I all but disappear-I tried to brown myself- with sunshine- with creams- with makeup- I could never make it look natural so I gave up.Fair skin is fragile skin- I must hide from sunshine. It's all so silly.

nathalie said...

Rauf you make me laugh - you say you hate intelligence yet your blog is full of it. You are bright, why not accept it? What problem do you have with intelligence? What problem do others have with skin colour?

Skin colour, I've seen this being an issue everywhere including in north America, south America. The thing is, as long as the western world will be the dominant culture it will remain the same. It will be an interesting thing when the Chinese take over the world - will we all get operations to get slanted eyes? And when India becomes the second dominant country perhaps we Europeans will dream of having a dark skin?

What a bloody waste of time.

rauf said...

oh orange people, wow ! Never heard of that LETTY GIRL, Do they smell like an orange Lettys ? i want to be an Orange man. i love oranges. When i eat an orange, i take the orange peel and squeeze it's spray on my t-shirt, i love the smell. i often wonder why they don't make orange perfumes or body spray. i really wish i had leaves on my body, making Chlorophyll. See, nobody is happy with what nature has given us Lettys. i wish i was green. i am as mad as everybody else. But i will not let people pluck fruits out of me. i would run with fruits dangling all over me. Hey don't chase me, these are my fruits. When i wake up after a nap i would find that all my fruits have been plucked, stolen. One can never be happy Lettys. Better be happy with what we have.

i'll look for orange people Lettys, i'll ask them if they are from Australia.

rauf said...

LINDA SUE, i wrote this post with what i already knew. I checked up later to find that India is the biggest market for all these fairness creams and the sales are on the rise every year. That makes us Indians silliest and the craziest people in the world. Indian men too are obsessed with fairness.

i wanted to write this post for a long time. i used to feel sad when ever i came across a parent complaining that no one is interested in marrying their dark skinned daughter. This is a big issue here as you see in the picture. Parents of the boy in an arranged marriage(nearly all are arranged marriages) demand a huge sum of money if the girl is dark. And the parents of the girl have to borrow the money to meet the demand and often land in to financial mess. Parents of a fair skinned girl don't get away lightly either. Though they can find a boy for their daughter easily. Dowry is a social evil in India. Fair skinned or dark skinned all are affected by it. It's been around for centuries and it is not likely to end. Some ads like in the picture may say 'no dowry' but the demands from the boy's parents come after the marriage and often the girl is tortured by the in laws to meet the demands.
Even if the girl is fair skinned, it is difficult for the parents to find a match for the girl if her horoscope is bad or does not match. This is a major factor in Indian arranged marriages. some horoscope may say (its a fraud really) that the parent of the boy would die if married to this girl. Can you believe how silly we Indians are Linda Sue ?

You get weaker sun rays than us Linda Sue. All the tanning lotions contain chemicals and they have side effects. Basking in the sun for a brief period is necessary. Traveling south for a week or ten days like Texas or Arizona or Mexico would be a good idea, carrying an umbrella is a must. Wide brimmed hat can only cover the face. School children in Iceland are made to stand around a special lamp emitting vitamin D. i saw a picture some years ago in National Geographic. People of Iceland can identify and name 18 different shades of white.

rauf said...

Dear NATHALIE, China has a history of self destruction. It is highly unlikely that they would rule the world. And the Indians are very lazy and we love being slaves to some thing or the other. Even if the Indians become the richest in the world, you can't remove the poverty from our minds. There is always tomorrow for us and tomorrow never comes. We cannot dominate the world. Riots would break out for choosing one of the 14 official languages (we have hundreds) as the official language of the world. And more riots to choose the official symbol of the world, lotus or the monkey. We are always lost in silly debates. The wise politicians would chose a symbol showing half monkey and half lotus. We are very silly people Nathalie. We have thousands of gods. Just imagine the chaos we would generate.

Fair and dark skinned is a separate issue here. There is racism and contempt within the dark skinned communities. Within the lowest of untouchable community. (like two people are dark skinned but they don't touch each other) Similar racism within the fair skinned higher castes. That is the funniest part of racism in India.
Like you say Nathalie, just imagine the time and energy wasted on these silly issues.

All the problems of the world were created by the wise and the intelligent and i don't want to be in their ranks. The problems created by the people, not by the animals. i am glad that i made you laugh Nathalie. i like to be a silly stupid Indian.

Ruth said...

rauf, I have to tell you an interesting story. Don told me about an Indian woman who is a mom of one of his students in his 4th grade class. When Don first knew her in the school she was a little chubby, with a very pretty face. She suddenly went on an exercise binge this year and lost weight and is now very thin. She is quite stunning, Don says. So apparently her husband told her that if she had been thin and beautiful when their marriage was arranged (she met him on their marriage day for the first time), he would never have been able to "get" her.

sonia a. mascaro said...

Very witty article, Rauf!
In the second video, the girl is much more beautiful with her natural skin, than the fair/fake skin, no doubt on my opinion! Yes, what a dumb commercial...

In Brazil most of the people love to be tan. I see many people at the beach and at the pool, "toast and grilling" themselves in the sun to be tan...Just crazy...

I agree with you: "Please be what you are"!
Have a pleasant weekend.

PeterParis said...

... and in this part of the world, we buy stuff to get a nice sun tan! ... or we stay hours on the beach to get the tan, at least then "naturally"!

What a pleasure to read this post and the comments! Sincere thanks, dear dark tanned (I suppose) friend!

Sam (Samrita Kapoor) said...

I am so glad you wrote on this topic-we as Indians have just normalized the 'list of standards' that a woman must conform to,in order to be a good match.
And that advertisement is just ridiculous, I guess she used some of that bleach on her hair as well- lol! Any sane person can tell that there are two different women in the before and after transformation in that advertisement.
I remember being coerced into bleaching my skin by a friend and the beautician-it's a terrible choice to make. Moreover, if a person is falling in love with you because of your skin color, that relation isn't going to last very long anyways.
Thank again, you have wonderfully made your point :)

Santhosh Subramaniam said...

Well said sir... Deserves to be shared... Especially the point that you are making about fair people being considered successful and dark people having lost everything in life and their life is ruined unless they become fair! :)

rauf said...

RUTH, almost similar to Ruby's case, we did not wait for a perfect match for her as she is pleasantly plump, but still very beautiful. It was an arranged marriage like Don's case perhaps.
Luckily for her and us Suhail turned out to be a very sweet guy. Now Ruby is losing weight slowly and looking more beautiful. i'll mail you her childhood pictures Ruth.

rauf said...

Not many are happy with what nature bestowed on them SONIA, The fairness cream commercials are misleading and irresponsible. We have different departments controlling like FDA in the US. Like Ministry of Health and Family Welfare - Central Drug Standards Control Organisation -Ministry of Food and Consumer Affairs - Ministry of Food Processing Industries - Agricultural and Processed Food Products Export Development Authority. It is very complicated in India. All departments are highly corrupt. When you see harmful products in the market and the commercials to promote them you can guess how ineffective these departments really are.

i agree with you Sonia, the dark skinned woman looks much better before the transformation. They all are dying to look like Europeans and Americans.

Marie said...

les deux portraits de ce reportage sont très beaux.

rauf said...

oh yes PETERTanning lotions too have chemicals in them and i don't know how harmful they are. Even breathing in warmer Southern France is very expensive i heard. Our skin needs Vitamin D and the sun is a good source of it and it is free. Of course there is a fear of skin cancer if you have too much of sun. You don't have to worry if you take some precautions. in old Hollywood colour movies of 60s 70s and the 80s i have noticed two distinct areas of tanned and untanned skin. It doesn't look good.

rauf said...

You have spent most of your life in India SAMRITA, and you know our mentality. Women are not treated with equal respect and don't get equal opportunities. This gets even worse in Indians living in Canada UK and the US. There are cases of atrocities against women who don't bring enough dowry. Very common in India. You don't know how angry i get when i hear such stories Samrita. i have written a lot about it in this blog.

Women are treated as objects in these silly commercials. i find this highly offensive. And no one is protesting.

One good thing i have noticed now in IT industry, women are not discriminated in getting a job if they have right qualification dark or fair skinned. Looks don't matter. The corporates are run by smart people. Most of the women have to sacrifice their job to get married. That is what the corporates want. There is no end to the sacrifices women make.
The capacity to love care and sacrifice is same in all women, fair or dark skinned. But what do they get in return ? They are not even trusted to have control over their lives. Remember one thing Samrita. The threshold of pain in women is 9 times higher than men. They endure it all.
And you have to remember one more thing. This planet is run and managed by the females species except for us stupid humans.

rauf said...

LET THE CHILD BLOSSOM Welcome to Daylight Again. your link takes me nowhere. i located your blog nonetheless. i see that you are new to the world of blogging. It is necessary for you to provide the link where ever you leave a comment so that the blogger can reciprocate, and the readers of that blog can visit you. In a while you will have more readers visiting your blog.

your blog is very interesting and you are dealing with very vital issues. i am glad you have taken up some very important subjects. Many of my readers would be interested in reading your posts.

More than the issue of fair or dark skin i feel that women are being insulted with such mindless commercials and in our insipid Indian movies where women are treated as objects. Talent qualification and experience score over the looks and the colour of the skin always. But not in an arranged marriage in India unfortunately. For an Indian girl, getting married seems to be the goal of her life. There is pressure from the parents as well, who are not so understanding. Naturally women are obsessed with having fair skin to get married and there are people who take advantage of such an obsession.
First priority of women should be economic independence not marriage or finding a handsome prince.

i'll be 63 in January, much senior to you but still i would be happy if you address me as rauf

Jyothi said...

the 9x fairness ad was a spoof, made to promote the launch of te new channel 9x.. but omg, is it hilarious or what! a fairness cream so strong that it even turned her black hair blond!

rauf said...

Merci MARIE J'ai un blog séparée pour les portraits. Le lien est sur le dessus de la barre latérale

i presque fait un fou de moi-même faire confiance à Google Translator Marie, espérons que la traduction est bonne

Thank you MARIE, i have a separate blog for portraits. The link is on the top of the side bar

i nearly made a fool of myself trusting google translator Marie, hope the translation is right

rauf said...

Thank you for the correction JYOTHI, i have made the correction in the post. I'll let the video remain anyway as it is hilarious. I have seen some magical transformations after a visit to beauty parlours including change in hair colour.
Welcome to Daylight Again Jyothi.

Elisabeth said...

I'm now to your blog via Ruth's.

What a powerful post, Raul. And what a magnificent plea. I agree, forget all this insistence on 'fairness' as the 'best'.

I am fair by birth - the luck of the draw. My parents were born in Holland to Dutch parents. I live in Australia. One of my daughters married a man who was born in Germany to a German-born mother and an African American father.

My grandson has what I would like to call, rainbow skin, the skin of his parents and ancestors - a combination of the dark and the fair.

It does not matter. His skin, like your skin and mine, is beautiful.

Thank you for writing about these pressures to change our skin. They are insidious. We must be able to be who we are, including the colour we were born. Our identities are not skin deep or skin coloured. We are so much more than this.

And there is room for diversity.

Thank you.

rauf said...

let us be fair, be fair to your subjects, fair is something good ELISABETH, Its only fair to give room for all, you are absolutely right, there is room room diversity. To us all Chinese all Japanese look the same, but they have differences. For you Elisabeth all Indians may look the same, but you will not believe the level and the extent of racism within Indians. Colour of the skin is one major issue here apart from others. Fair skin actually came from outside, it is foreign to us. The originals, the natives had dark skin, they were kicked around by the a never ending stream of invaders. We have 365 days of direct and harsh sunlight, dark skin is what the doctor ordered for us. The doctor being nature or God.

We export wisdom from India, costs money now Elisabeth, this is after the Beatles invasion. All the gods who were sleeping in the dark suddenly woke up and started selling wisdom yoga and all, mostly in the western countries. i think all the wisdom has been exported leaving none for us Indians. The obsession of having fair skin is 'fairly' recent, say past 50 years. I think first fairness cream appeared some 30 years ago. People were happy with their skin before that. The obsession for fair skin in India is ever growing.

Welcome to Daylight Again Elisabeth.

Vishesh said...

didn't they say life isn't fair? :P

rauf said...

Life isn't dark either Vishesh

Shaista said...

I just finished reading all the comments, beginning with 'not fair or slim, just radiantly beautiful' and ending with 'life's not fair... it's not dark either'!!
So much laughter, so much truth here.
I am mixed race in a way - Dad is Muslim from Rajput stock, and Mom is Parsi - so I'm mix-fair :) I'm just happy I have Mom's smile and heart, and Dad's mind and spirit.
This is such an important area you have focussed on Rauf, but how can it change? Eyes often see through shades and veils of pre-determined prejudices.
This is why it so important to SMILE!!!!

swati said...

The 9X fairness cream is not a spoof! it's an ad of the channel - 9X!!

Sewmouse said...

Well, I am about as "fair" as a person can get without being an albino pink-eyes, but not slim, oh nonono!! I am FAT!! And old.

And the obsession with "slim""thin" etc. had gotten so bad that there were skeletons posing as fashion models and now they are insisting that the girls must have more than just skin and bones. Anorexia is also a disease, and one the media has promoted with its emphasis on thin, thin, thin...

I saw a woman this summer with the most beautiful skin I've ever seen. Perfect tone, lovely, satiny, not a bump or bruise anywhere - and she was very, very dark.

There was a radio talk-show guy in Denver back in the early 80's who used to do a regular "bit" every summer about how white people secretly wanted to be black because they would go out and try to tan themselves. His name was Alan Berg. Someone murdered him, but I don't think it was because of the tanning thing.

It seems none of us are happy as we are. The thin girls want to be thinner until they are skeletons. The fat girls are told they are "obese" and ugly. The white girls want to be tan and the dark girls want to be fair.

I have decided not to worry overmuch about how I look. I am what I am and that's all what I am, I'm Sewmouse the lazy blogger! toottoot!

rauf said...

Dear SHAISTA what a lovely smile you have, saw your picture with Jila Peacock. Never heard of her. Hope you don't mind my pedestrian English. i have no command over the language the way you do. i just want to communicate. Life is simple we make it complicated. For me there is nothing deep to understand, i see life the way a monkey does. i don't understand or sometimes i refuse to understand any complication.

i often stop at your place and look at myself and realise that i am not dressed well enough to enter your house. ah ! look at my shoes ! dear o dear ! i am diagonally opposite of Shaistagi and i am very shabby and uncouth. And i am always afraid of hurting you with my views on Islam and other religions.

You are familiar with Indian culture Shaista. A lower caste man religiously performs his duties in the hope of being reborn in a higher caste. We can't wait that long. We want to upgrade ourselves into a higher caste by using fairness creams. Its a short cut. We have a very long history of racism in India. They don't realise that we can't defeat racism with fairness creams. After writing the post i read some reports saying that India is the biggest market for fairness creams. You can't defeat the system. As you have seen in the matrimonial classifieds there is a demand for fair skin, obsession comes naturally as getting married is the only goal for them. Things get more complicated from here.
There is no hope of any change Shaista. These prejudices have been around for thousands of years. We refuse to evolve.

rauf said...

Thank you CAAPIWRITER, i am a black kaapi drinker
welcome to daylight again

rauf said...

oh no ! not in India SEW, Anorexia is a rich man's disease in India, rather rich woman's disease, only the young in high society or the women who want to be in high society are obsessed with thinness. Nothing to do with health. Rest eat well while they have money. Only well fed women get roles in the movies. No one would give a role to a skeleton. Very few fashion models are thin. Indian clothes are heavy, a skeleton may not carry it. more over it is difficult to remain thin eating mouth watering food rich in oil. Once a girl gets married she puts on weight, makes no effort to remain slim and within a couple of years they become aunties. That is no problem but they continue their efforts to be fair. Plump is fine and dark is not fine. i always advise people to eat well while they can. Indians embrace what Americans have rejected. There is a big crowd at MacDonalds always in the big cities. Thank goodness the poor like me can't afford it

Perhaps white supremacy nuts would have helped Allan Berg to meet God.

Yes Sew, there is no point in worrying too much about how we look. No one is going to throw us out of the planet if we don't fall into their standards or requirements.

Vagabonde said...

As a coincidence I just finished reading a mystery where the author is speaking about skin tones. I bought it second-hand to take on my last trip. It is by Barbara Neely and it is called Blanche and the Talented Ten. Blanche White is the heroine, and she is very black. She goes to a resort in Maine, which is for upper class African Americans, but most of them are “fair” or “high yellow” as she calls them. I had not realized that there was such prejudice in the US by African Americans about the skin color and now I read that it is the same in India. What a shame. It is so hurtful for young people who have darker tones, and older people too for that matter. In our days this type of prejudice should not happen anymore but how can we stop it…

Anonymous said...

Dear R,
Social Discrimination will survive as long as man does… It just keeps taking one degrading subject and then another…
I work alongside colleagues whose passports are from a wester country. They get paid more than we do and definitely get more allowances… I may be Indian, I may have dark skin and if my passport says I’m from so and so… then lo and behold! Everything changes…
As degrading and unfair as this may seem, the point is… Love yourself, respect yourself, believe that you are beautiful…Don’t let anyone tell you different.
In the words of my husband  There is no such thing as an ugly woman!

Crz_MJ said...

Hello. Nice photos. Interesting to read. Great job! Hmm.. Michael Jackson suffered from two Auto-immune disorders. One is Lupus (SLE), because of which he suffered from Joint Pains. The next is Universal Vitiligo, which turned his skin from black to white. Vitiligo gets aggrevated due to stress, anti-depressant pills, etc,. And June 25th, his death anniversary is held as World Vitiligo Day. His medical reports prove that he had Vitiligo & SLE. And was dependent on pain-killers. And surgeries were used as a source of getting distraction from those pains. You could see lot of Vitiligo patients in India. Check this link - Most of the famous individuals who were also affected with Vitiligo  —  Michael Jackson, P. Sathasivam (Chief Justice of India). https://medium.com/@jajoo26/a-classic-black-and-white-analysis-a-vitiligo-patients-perspective-411ed6ecb39c#.mji91uu4c