With the arranged marriage drama going with full josh in mine as well as my other friends’ places ["You guys are in the wrong side of 20s and if it become 30 no one will give girl for you"-a pretty threatening warning from my friend's mom].One thing which stuck me was the matrimonial ads - Fair, slim, good looking girl. The four letter F word [don’t let skewed thoughts take over your mind I meant-FAIR] is like THE priority for the search.
I vividly remember the ad where the father of an ex-not-so-pretty girl exclaims 'Kundali mil gayee' after she turns pretty using the Fair n Sickly cream and bumps into handsome young man. Though I wish we had many more sportive fathers like that, my mind starts processing the question why Indians are obsessed with fairness. This obsession has no gender bias,while all the girls want the color of nicole kidman the guys too with the advent of specialized male fairness creams want a piece of the cake[SRK ad was seriously Ewww I could digest his bath tub adventure].
If I am gonna claim that I don’t get attracted to the lighter skinned ones that would be like Mullah omar taking white lilies to the American air bombers. But then more than the color its the complexion which plays an important role. Sadly the gullible consumers don’t know the difference between color and complexion and get fooled by the false claims of fairness cream ads.
The Indian fairness cream market is worth a whopping 800 crore so why would they think about ethics to put up racist ads. It’s an open secret that fairness creams don’t make us fair. Unless until they can go through the epidermis [the outer layer of skin] they can no way make us fair. But then they can whiten us temporarily like bleaching agents by reducing melanin.
So why all this gyaan about fairness now? Well last week this supposedly enlightened blog owner went to a beauty salon, fell for the sweet talk of lady receptionist and agreed to get a skin lightening treatment done, total cost only 2k!! The beautician was waxing eloquence of how I would look after two days with the effect of the treatment blooming on my face then. The net result-well it has been 4 days since and the cute delhiwali across my bay who used to give a coy smile has stopped that too. Thanks for all the blooming.
This is a nation where even the gods are obsessed with color, imagine Lord Krishna asking his mommy Yashoda - "Radha kyun gori, main kyun kaala?" meaning "Why is Radha so fair, while I am so dark?”. What am I a mere mortal when compared to that :-) . So next time I am gonna try that skin de-pigmentation treatment which costs twice the GDP of Rwanda, let me check the blooming effect then.
Who knows may be the girls are asking for fair, handsome guy with 6-packs in matrimonial ads. Let me have at least one of those. Or even better I may be noticed in any of the media parties which I get invites by mistake and bag a chance to act in movies. Then you guys would see me in Page 3 or in a stardust cover with my right hand around Katrina, left on Minisha Lamba, Genelia pleading to give her the half eaten apple in my hand and ......hmmmm life is a weird cauldron indeed :-)
6 years ago
