DH wanted to watch the India-Pakistan game for the champion’s trophy. I belong to the ‘I hate cricket’ club whose members have been growing in recent times. I write this as I watch a very dismal performance from the Indian side. The advertisements were more exciting. The recent Docomo ‘pay per second’ ad got me thinking on the color issue. Why do ads in India love featuring blonds and white skinned females? (I was told that most of them are really Indians with bleached faces and hair but I digress) Is the common Indian man really that obsessed with color and prefers it over the new and improved ‘aaj ki bhartiya nari’
So I pop a question to DH – ‘If you have to choose one women with exactly the same body type but different skin and hair color which one would you choose - blond, brunette, brown etc – your pick.
DH looked like a little boy in a candy store. I had to clarify that this was just a hypothetical question and I had no intentions whatsoever of lining them up for him. DH replies, ‘If it is a hypothetical question the answer is brown skin and black hair’ Smart.
Are the days of the colonial mindset and bowing to the ‘gora’ a thing of the past? Or do the 4 billion and growing population of brown people prefer to be genetically modified? The fair cream products for women as well as men have been doing very well and most of these companies have predicted exponential growths. The numbers are self explanatory. We talk about the ‘dark' sinister happenings and ‘black’ deeds. We talk about 'white' peace and being ‘fair’. Isn’t it just an extension of this? Are we fundamentally wired to gravitate towards fair/white? Or is brown the new black ?
And Yes India lost the match. Sigh.
