When Bollywood actress Priyanka Chopra crossed over into Hollywood to play the competitive, leather jacket-wearing secret agent Alex Parrish in “Quantico,” IU junior Grishma Patel was excited to see characters who looked like her.
But she realized it wasn’t as simple for her sister.
The sisters may have come from the same family and the same parents, but they also have drastically different skin tones. Even though they share the same father and mother, who are from Ghana and India respectively, Patel is lighter-skinned while her sister has darker skin.
While actresses like Chopra are Indian, they are also predominantly light-skinned, Patel said. As a result, while Patel was able to watch movies with actresses who looked like her, she said her sister wasn’t afforded the same luxury.
“When you turn on the TV, you’re bombarded with pictures of only light-skinned women,” Patel said. “It can send a message that dark-skinned girls aren’t valued, that they don’t deserve to be in those positions.”
This prejudice against people of darker skin tones but of the same race has a name: colorism.
In the past month, black actresses Jurnee Smollett-Bell and Sasheer Zamata have spoken out about colorism.
Zamata told Allure magazine in an April 12 article that she grew up hearing that she shouldn’t play outside for too long so she wouldn’t get darker.
“I’m really proud to be black and love my skin and am growing to love more of me as the days go by,” Zamata told Allure.
Radhika Parameswaran, IU professor and researcher on the effect of colorism in India, said girls and women in African-American, Latino and Asian communities who don’t embody these skin tone beauty norms are labeled as deviant and face stigma.
“Lighter-skinned women are seen as more beautiful, more intelligent and more socially favorable in these communities,” she said.
Patel said her darker-skinned sister faces this prejudice in a community that views dark skin as unattractive or dirty. Her grandmother often encourages her sister to skip outdoor sports practices in order to keep her skin from getting darker.
“It probably makes her feel like an outsider and like she’s not on the same level just because of her skin tone,” Patel said.
Parameswaran said colorism in India is rooted in the hierarchy created by the caste system, in which dark skin is associated with the poor, manual laborers of the lower castes. As a result, the lighter skin tones of the upper class are favored over darker skin tones. European colonialism cemented such prejudices by introducing Eurocentric beauty norms.
“Once you touch a nation in that way, you can’t take it back,” Patel said.
Before she moved to the United States 27 years ago, Parameswaran spent her life in India, where she was surrounded by billboards and commercials touting the effects of skin bleaching and skin-lightening creams like Fair and Lovely.
Parameswaran said a new generation, however, is spearheading national and global efforts to challenge colorism.
In 2009, a female empowerment organization called Women of Worth launched its ongoing “Dark is Beautiful” campaign. Social activist Fatima Lodhi created a similar campaign called “Dark is Divine” in her native Pakistan.
Other activist groups, including New Delhi’s “Brown n’ Proud,” began popping up in South Asian universities. Last year, one black and two South Asian-American students jumpstarted the #UnfairAndLovely campaign across social media platforms to challenge the use of Fair and Lovely skin-lightening cream. Patel said the cream whitewashes beauty.
Despite these grassroots movements, Parameswaran said mainstream media around the world continues to latch onto light-skinned beauty ideals.
“I have hope,” Parameswaran said. “This isn’t written in blood. We can change it and make things better.”
Paramesawaran said the best way to combat colorism is to change the perceptions of the next generation. Doing so would require parents and teachers to be open to talking about colorism with children and making them feel worthy regardless of skin tone.
Patel said she would recommend producing children’s TV shows with characters of various skin tones.
“When a child is insecure about their skin tone, parents shouldn’t brush it off or put Fair and Lovely in their hands,” Parameswaran said. “They should listen and teach them that they are worth so much more than the shade of their skin.”
