Obsession With Fair Skin Among Asians

'Don't forget to carry umbrellas on a sunny day' we all must have heard this phrase in our life a lot many times. Do we hear this because people are actually concerned about aur skin getting damaged due to the harmful UV rays or are they only concerned because our skin may get darkened due to this. "The more fairer the more beautiful"is the commen advice given by everyone today. But from where has this all started from?

Most of the South East asian countries are obsessed with fair skin. It was around 1960 to 1970 when most of the South East Asian countries got their independence from the Western countries.After the western countries were gone, people were left with the ideology that the fair rules and the dark is slave. People started believing that being fair means being more beautiful and pretty.

We are taught from our childhood only that women must be beautiful and everyone has set some standards of this beauty. And they look down on people on the basis of this standard. A friend of mine once went for an audition for some role in a play. When she returned back she was very depressed and sad. On asking she told me that the director wanted a beautiful girl for the act, so she couldn't even gather the courage to go up on the stage because of her dark tone. She told me that after doing bleaching on her skin she will again reapply for the audition. I was not only shocked but really annoyed that why being beautiful is compared with being fair.

Why are we getting obsessed with this kind of ideology? From where are these standards of beauty coming from? In today's world of fast, easy, and accessible internet connection we are connected to the whole world. We see the trend going around us and we try to change us according to the trend. One day i was watching a show on television. During the break time i saw this ad where this girl who was dark was having difficulty in finding a job for her, but when she applied this cream on her and became fair and she immediately got a job offer from a big company and her life became easy. On another ad the girl was getting rejected from marriage due to dark skin but as soon as she became fair she was accepted by everyone. And that's when I realised where is all this coming from. The global market for skin lighteners is $19.8billion and is growing rapidly due to the increasing demand.

This growth rate itself tells us about the demand for fair skin. The high standards set up by the people is not only increasing the demand but also changing the definition of being beautiful. Even after getting freedom,we are being enslaved by such ideologies.It is important to understand that beauty comes from within. Being beautiful and being perfect is not something that will come from fair skin, but it is being yourself without any filter.