Dark and Beautiful

It was late evening when I reached Coimbatore airport. Small airport with a lot of crowd.
Right then, 3 British women entered (I know they are British because we ended up lounging beside each other) and everyone around started to stare at them as if some alien has come out tumbling out of its space ship.

Men staring at them
Women feeling insecure already

I mean, what is this obsession about fair skin in this country?

An average Indian woman, is dusky. Its a fact and this fact is so celebrated outside India.

People in the Westerns and other "fairer" parts of the world, get treatments done, get themselves baked in the sun to get a skin tone (tan) like us.
We here are blessed with that beautiful bronze and we hate it.

There are so many women with lovely features who are dusky and get rejected in the marriage market for being "dark".
These girls are not just rejected by some uneducated dude, they are actually rejected by properly educated, working guys.

People from the south of India are ridiculed by the North people for being "black.

Why do you think the fairness creams get their businesses running for all these years?
Simple, its because a dusky girl is being told from the time she is a little about her dark skin. Mother's, Aunts, other relatives compare them with the so-called "fairer" cousins.
They keep telling her, that she won't find a job or a man to marry.

Fairness cream ad's show the exact same thing. A dusky girl, is sad has no friends, no boyfriend, no job, she uses the fairness cream and instantly becomes pink and she has friends, she has men swooning over her, a very lucrative job just on her looks and not credentials.
She has a whole freaking personality transformation just because of her skin color.

Even friends, sometimes unknowingly tease the dusky person on the color grounds.

Trust me!!
People who know me, would know that in my school days and college, I was match-stick thin and dusky.
People used to say
"you are so dark that if you walk out in the night people can see only your teeth"
"Don't touch me or else your color will pass on to mine"

I have seen so many matrimony profiles that say "Wanted bride, FAIR, well educated etc etc."
Why cant a dusky, well educated, nice, homey girl do?

Why cant our society just accept the people the way they are.
 Its the genes, the sun, the states near the equator that reflects in the skin.

So many girls whom I personally know have a low self-esteem in spite of being educated, earning well, the only reason is they are "black". If you ask me, I would say the darker, prettier, exotic skin tone.

The toxic belief that "fair is beautiful" has to be eradicated. Measuring a person's worth by their skin color is so wrong. So, very wrong.

There is more to people that their skin color.
Hope Indians really come to accept this fact some day.