Let's Be (UN)fair!

My mom used to tell me, that when I was born, she used to pinch me several times a day for several weeks, to make sure that I was born fair-complexioned and that that was to stay. Apparently, if you pinch a baby, if the skin turns pink, the baby is dark complexioned, and if the skin turns white, the baby is fair-complexioned. My mother is of a darker complexion and was reminded of this fact all her growing life with the implication that it would be difficult to find a groom for her.

As I was growing up, I got to hear words such as "beautiful", "pretty", "eligible" all the time just because I was/am fair. I often felt that my intelligence, achievements, personality, nature, never mattered as long as I was fair. I also got to hear the word "lucky" all the time, because now I would have a variety of potential grooms to choose from. Matrimonial ads never failed to stress how fair the boy or the girl was and that they in turn were seeking fair partners. Now is that really fair (pun intended) to pick or reject one's partner based on their complexion? I remember what a hard time my uncle had in convincing his mother about marrying my aunt just because she was darker. His words, "I want to marry a Black Beauty"! Her words, "But you can find someone better because you are fair!".

That suggests that the word beauty is paired with a fair complexion, amongst Indians. And when the beauty is not lighter, one feels the need to specify that the beauty is black! The result of this phenomena is that the not so fair people grow up with low self-esteem, body hatred, regrets, and spend a whole lot of money on fairness creams and lotions (which thrive on these people's naivety and play with their emotions).

Looking at the bigger picture, in the United States, there is a separate label of people who are not white. They are called "people of color". Blacks (African Americans), Browns (Indians), and Yellows (East Asians) all fall in this category. And often discriminated against.

The implications of this kind of an attitude are broad. And the reasons for the diffence in skin color are simple.
http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/0211/feature2/online_extra.html
Skin color has nothing to do with bad luck and darker skin color does not mean that your life is potentially ruined. Let us try and accept who we are, make the others realize that who we are does not change if we decided to get ourselves tanned or bleached, and that it is not fair (literally!) to put darker people down!