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India’s beauty industry thrives on the country’s ugly obsession with fair complexions and skin lightening products – an underlying reality I realised much later in life. Even though I’d grown up watching my grandmother smother her face with talcum powder while she constantly reminded my mother to not let me spend too much time playing out in the sun lest I get tanned. Little did I know that this prejudice against darker skinned people, especially women, was not a new phenomenon, but an unfortunate and deeply rooted truth of our culture. Be it due to some sort of colonial hangover or, as some reports state, a result of the caste system wherein members of the lower caste often had darker skin, the fact remains that fairness face creams (and face washes and face masks) are still a hot sell in the market and giant corporations along with our media industry have no intentions of missing out on that kind of revenue.
While on one hand fairness creams continue their absurd campaigns of ideal beauty and matrimonial sites demand fair-skinned prospective brides, there is a growing counter movement destabilising the fairness illusion that has clouded India for far too long. Whether it’s film director Nandita Das’ ‘Dark Is Beautiful’ campaign or Instagram campaigns dedicated to recognising and reclaiming identities of South Asian women by challenging the ‘fair and lovely’ narrative, we’ve come a really long way, with an even longer one to go. And Waseka Nahar’s most recent illustration titled ‘Dark & Lovely’ is just another reminder of that.
A few days ago, Bangladeshi artist Waseka Nahar, who goes by her social media moniker ‘Triory’, released a stunning digital rendition of Zainab Anwar’s self-portrait. The illustration is that of a dark-skinned woman holding a face cream tube called ‘Dark & Lovely’ such that it covers the right side of her face. A powerful artwork meant to reignite and bring back the conversation around large corporations constantly preying and feeding off the society’s insecurities – insecurities that specifically target women, Nahar’s illustration is bold, honest, and most importantly, a call for solidarity for every woman who has ever been made to feel inferior because of her complexion.
Inspired from Zainab Anwar’s photograph posted on her Instagram page, both the photo and the artwork are meant to resonate with women belonging to the Indian subcontinent, as is reflected in the traditional attire worn by the woman in the photo. “Growing up I had faced scrutiny for being “dark” and my relatives would give me fairness creams. Thus, I thought of creating a tube with the opposite idea to make people question this whole industry which is promoting so much negativity and ultimately leads to greater issues such as racism”, said Anwar in a report by NDTV. Soon after, their collaboration had gone viral all over social media, and garnered just the kind of attention they hoped it would.
“Zainab’s picture symbolises that there is a certain ‘stigma’ - for lack of a better word - surrounding dark skin. The picture boldly says that dark skin is as beautiful as its counterpart,” says the Bangladeshi artist whose Instagram is full of other such artwork that attempts to visually challenge patriarchy and the systematic oppression that continues to plague both rural and urban women in India. According to Nahar, fairness creams only add fuel to the existing colourism in the society and it is this discrimination she wants to address through her work.
While a single illustration can’t actually get rid of the problematic mindset overnight, it is impactful in the way it has brought back conversations around patriarchy, accountability on behalf of the internationally growing fairness industry, and colour-based discrimination that is rampant even amongst the so-called educated and privileged households of our society. Because, at the end of the day, it’s still a really long way to go.
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