Beyond Fair & Lovely: Why Colorism Still Haunts Indian Women

Snow White was the angelic figure with "skin as white as snow" thereby relating a certain skin color to inner and outer Beauty, but in some ways stereotyping people with darker skin to as witches.

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As a woman, it is difficult to be heard. But when you are a black (dark-skinned) woman, you are invisible," Kerala's Chief Secretary Sarada Muraleedharan recently spoke out against discrimination at work, on the basis of skin colour.

She was simply calling out a bias deeply embedded in our society. Fair skin is seen as "superior" while darker skin as "native" or "subordinate." There is a strange association of fairness with power, privilege, and prestige.

Certainly, colorism has colonial roots in Indian society- as the British poet Rudyard Kipling emphasized it with "The White Man's Burden" alluding to the idea that the civilized world is all white-skinned western world who have a moral obligation to "civilize" the other part of this world which is non-white. But even in pre-colonial times, the upper castes (often indoors) tended to be lighter-skinned than manual labourers who worked under the sun. Over centuries, this reinforced the idea that lighter skin is equivalent to higher status, gaining ground within our society.

Look at the marriage market "Wanted: fair, beautiful bride"—it's normalized casteist, classist colorism where fair skin is rated high and "gori chitti" bahu is a prized possession most would love to flaunt. Conversely, you become a depreciating asset if you are dark. Many Indians have absorbed these ideals and passed them down—mothers telling daughters to avoid tanning, or using fairness creams before weddings.

It's not just about skin—it's tied to ideas of success, femininity, desirability, and sometimes even morality.