Café Dissensus

By Maithili Sakhrani

This essay tries to highlight some skin-related issues in the beauty and cosmetics industry, and health industry. It questions the basic premise of certain labels, on which stereotypes, as well as notions of openness and acceptance base themselves, starting with what does it even mean to categorise a certain skin colour Brown, Black, so on and so forth. It also tries to explore how the conditioned model of White skin as the norm has affected and effected notions of beauty, culture, as well as the medical and technological model.

Skin and skin colour in India have always been a contested point of inquiry. The discourse has pervasively seeped in the circles of high society, the gossip sections of yellow journalism, academic erudite circles, middle- and working-class daily rituals. No entity has been left untouched by it, be it sociology, politics, or economics. It has become ingrained to such an extent, that at this point, in many parts of India, for many families arranging marriages, prospective brides with specifically ‘fair’ skin tones are looked for,[1] and girl children are wished fervently to be born gori (literally white, interpreted as fair). To be identified as the ‘brown skinned individual’ is viewed with extreme hatred; towards the term and the self by several Indians. The darker skinned individual is viewed with extreme prejudice: distrust, instigator of problems, dirtiness, and sin. Being ‘darker’ skinned is akin to being cursed, on the periphery of larger society.

Aisha Phoenix builds on established observations and writes how people with light skin earn more money, complete more years of schooling, live in better neighbourhoods, and marry higher-status people, as juxtaposed against darker-skinned people of the same race or ethnicity.[2] Jarune Uwujaren uses the term ‘racialized sexism’ to describe how racism and sexism intersect for women of colour, which applies here.[3]

A colonial remnant, the term ‘brown’ itself can be questioned through multiple perspectives: What can be defined as brown, or dark skinned? Brown-er or darker in comparison to what index? Or for that matter, lighter or fairer in comparison to which skin colour? Does it even look ‘brown’, and not ‘deep yellow’, ‘golden’ or ‘creamy’? Is labelling individuals with terms like ‘PoC (People of Colour)’ or ‘Brown’ not creating categories of viewing humans differently as opposed to a certain set identity of human? What does it mean to other societal sections which have been defined/ attributed with such labels? Is this identity, a fixed label marker that defines the Indian identity? Does the Indian individual even accept the term ‘Brown’ in defining/labelling them? Can the Indian individual go beyond their brown identity and not be essentialised for it?

The ingrained bias has manifested itself in multiple manners. Be it employability,[4] caste,[5] or even cosmetology,[6] fashion and beauty industry;[7] the shades of skin colour often define one’s worth in society and their place in the proverbial societal ladder. This paper will thus explore the Indian skin colour from a sociological perspective, looking at the social model of indigenous and foreign practices of altering the outer skin.

Current Outlook: Indian Beauty Standards

It seems fitting to begin with the standards of the Indian beauty industry that millions subscribe to. While the idea of ‘fair’ or ‘white’ skin has been attributed to the colonial conquest by the then European hegemonies, the preference for fair skin has had a complicated history from the Vedic times. Several Gods or heroic characters in Indian epics have been portrayed to be darker skinned, most famously Ram and Krishna. Paintings in the Ajanta caves show the queen being a resplendent, powerful, wealthy, blessed figure whose handmaidens are ‘fairer’ than her. However, Bharatmuni’s treatise on performance, Natyashastra, categorises characters according to their skin colour, where the ‘fairest’, are the most virtuous, painted and dressed in yellow and gold, and the ones with the darkest skin, are sinful, painted and dressed with blue or black. Outliers, of course existed, but were few.

In the contemporary Indian context, ways of lightening the skin via herbal remedies, concoctions of turmeric, milk and honey, and chemical creams are well known and much beloved in the Indian market. Fairness cream brands like Ponds, Nivea, and the infamous Glow and Lovely (once Fair and Lovely, which faced severe backlash and had to change its name) are working on rebranding their image to keep up with the discourse of beauty standards projected by their competitors. The herbal and ‘organic’ brands of Patanjali, Vicco, Himayala, JustHerbs, etc. portray the same idea of beauty reframed by appealing to one’s health instead. Technological advancements on the other hand have introduced lightening serum treatments, bleaching, skin tanning centres and even skin whitening medical procedures. These interventions however, still have not been adequately tested on a clinical scale, and the few tests conducted have had distressing results which have proven the health risks that they pose.

These standards of beauty rarely apply to the melanin content of Indian skin, and are based on a Eurocentric model. By commodifying beauty standards, these so-called solutions and treatments alienate a huge section of society within the country itself. With salons and spas popping up increasingly in urban spaces, and firms like Urban Company, beauty has truly become a business affordable and accessible to a select few of the upper middle, affluent and elite classes of privilege.

Cosmetic brands have traditionally catered to the model of the western idea of feminine beauty, with ‘white’ skin, blue eyes, and blonde hair. By emulating western paradigms of beauty, revered for their toxicity, makeup often washes out or pales the Indian skin, instead of complementing it, and enhancing its natural beauty. Even indigenous brands like Lakmé, Colorbar, Lotus, etc. have for long catered to these standards. During their early dominion, their statements of catering to the Indian skin catered to only the ‘lighter’ toned Indian skin. Brands which have emerged as competitors in catering to Indian skin like Mama Earth, Forest Essentials, Sugar, etc. however are a recent phenomenon, and are extremely expensive for an average Indian consumer.

Many of these cosmetic companies however have also come under fire for the way they name their products. Often, products catering to shades of ‘non-white’ skin are named coffee, mocha, caramel, wheat, chocolate etc. It raises pertinent questions of whether the Indian, and subsequently brown skin, is viewed at the same level that food is. This can be further drawn into exploring the dynamics between food as a commodity for human consumption, and ‘brown’ people and other people of colour being commodified for profit by capitalist regimes to increase their customer base. By equating a section of people to food, it views those people not as human beings first but borrowed identities of commodities that can be consumed themselves, dehumanising them. It also infantilizes ‘brown’ people and other people of colour by showing them as exotic commodities that can be understood only by comparing them to an established, familiar backdrop of food. Another thought that naturally can be considered, is whether including such ideas without much thought put into it is thus highly tokenistic in nature, without any chance for redemption. To thus fit in, the ‘brown’ skinned individual must succumb to this socio-political regime of the cosmetic industry if they have to have the opportunity to make use of such products.

This fitting in has had a highly controversial history attached to it, where notions of Sanskritization (rudimentarily, the policy of changing one’s name and identity to that of another caste to be socially included and achieve upward social mobility) and westernisation seems almost parallel to it. This practice of ‘fitting in’ was either done voluntarily by submission, as in the case of Michael Jackson, or forcefully, where canonising magazines have had a longstanding history of whitewashing well established artists in their visual narratives. People on the big screen have their bodies conformed to standards, of being hairless, ‘fair’ skinned, attractive plastic-like artificial individuals without ‘blemishes’ to appeal to the larger audience.

Technology has taken this a step further by introducing newer practices of removal of body hair. While this practice has been prevalent for more than five thousand years in India, emerging methods like Laser hair removal promise relatively pain free and longer lasting/ permanent ‘treatments’ in ‘curing’ the cause of body hair. Traditional laser hair removal was modelled on the ‘white’ skin, which identified hair based on colour. As the colour of the hair is darker than the base skin, the laser hair removal worked by targeting the melanin in hair, which focused on the hair follicle. The ‘lighter’ the skin, and darker the hair, the more effective the ‘treatment’ would be. However, as the laser could not differentiate between the pigment, in skin and hair, this treatment was dangerous to people of colour, whose ‘darker’ skin due to the melanin content was targeted as well, resulting in burns, hyperpigmentation, blisters etc over the body.

While this practice is being addressed, even till date no safe practice of laser hair removal for the ‘darker’ skinned body exists, which has achieved 100% clinically safe trials. Safety as a concern and the racist bias seeping into it preventing proper procedure is very evident here. One can easily wonder that if such results were observed in the western white context, affecting the white individual, would laser sessions and technologies have been shut down or paused without a proper alternative first being established?

Biosensors and Photoshop: Racism in Technology

Another way in which technology has adapted, based on skin colour is biosensors. Sensors of such type are found everywhere in daily life: from the restroom tap sensors which automatically control water flow eliminating need for knobs, to the medical oximeters. Biosensors in the medical, health and fitness industry make use of red, green, and infrared lights to detect oxygen levels in blood and present findings. These sensors however, are inherently flawed in their make-up, or usage.[8] These biosensors were made with the white skinned model as a prototype. By recognizing pigment, rather than motion or heat, the technology privileges certain people and gives them the status of being the ideal, prototype human being, and relegates the rest. People who do not fit that prototype constitute a considerable section and thus fall outside society as sub-humans.

Taps and soap dispensers not working for ‘darker’ skin tones, and oximeters displaying inaccurate results for the same signify an ever-increasing distance of questioning the idea of being a human, while contributing to the racist discourse. It seems to regress back to the colonial model of ‘Dogs and Indians not allowed’, where the individual autonomy and agency of the individual is not only ignored, but actively judged. Another worrying factor is that once this problem was recognized, it was rectified, where these biosensors could be adjusted to recognize multiple skin colour types. However, effective action was not done. While in India, many models have been successfully adjusted to fit the Indian ‘brown’ skin on a national level, in the western world, it has not been done, situating the issue in society and culture rather than science and technology. Technology has thus been appropriated as the new model of the twenty first century in propagating racial discrimination.

Technology has invaded the societal framework to decide who constitutes to be a human. Those who do not fit the mould are excluded from it. If they are exceptional and still has brown skin, then cosmetic technologies enable them to fit in. An example to this can be the white washing of ‘brown’ skinned individuals by established canonising magazines like Elle, which was accused of lightening the skin of actress Aishwarya Rai Bachchan. It reflects the ingrained discriminatory attitude that society has towards darker skin. This attitude has manifested historically through violent forms of discrimination, of silent prejudice, patriarchal unconscious and is not only limited to the biological reality of skin, but also the additional adornments on it.

 

[1] Philips, Amali. “Gendering Colour: Identity, Femininity and Marriage in Kerala.” Anthropologica, vol. 46, no. 2, 2004, pp. 253–72.

[2] Phoenix, Aisha. “Colourism and the Politics of Beauty” Feminist Review, Sage Publications Ltd., No. 108, Black British Feminisms (2014), pp. 97-105.

[3] Uwujaren, Jarune. “Dealing with Racialized Sexism.” Everyday Feminism, 8 Sept. 2014, everydayfeminism.com/2013/10/dealing-with-racialized-sexism/

[4] Koepke, Deanna Jacobsen. “Race, Class, Poverty, and Capitalism.” Race, Gender & Class, vol. 14, no. 3/4, 2007, pp. 189–205.

[5] Panini, M. N. “Caste, Race and Human Rights.” Economic and Political Weekly, vol. 36, no. 35, 2001, pp. 3344–46.

[6] Thompson Summers, Brandi. “Race as Aesthetic: The Politics of Vision, Visibility, and Visuality in Vogue Italia’s ‘A Black Issue.’” QED: A Journal in GLBTQ Worldmaking, vol. 4, no. 3, 2017, pp. 81–108.

[7] Mathews, Tayler J., and Glenn S. Johnson. “Skin Complexion in the Twenty-First Century: The Impact of Colorism on African American Women.” Race, Gender & Class, vol. 22, no. 1–2, 2015, pp. 248–74.

[8] Frank, Randy. “How Does Skin Color Impact Biosensors?” Sensor Tips, 12 Jan. 2023, http://www.sensortips.com/featured/how-does-skin-color-impact-biosensors/.

Works Cited

Basas, Carrie Griffin. “Henna Tattooing: Cultural Tradition Meets Regulation.” Food and Drug Law Journal, vol. 62, no. 4, 2007, pp. 779–803.

Basu, Brishti. “The People Fighting ‘light Skin’ Bias.” BBC News, BBC, 24 Feb. 2022, http://www.bbc.com/future/article/20200818-colourism-in-india-the-people-fighting-light-skin-bias.

Cheng, Anne Anlin. “Skins, Tattoos, and Susceptibility” Representations, Vol. 108, No. 1 (Fall 2009), pp. 98-119, University of California Press

Frank, Randy. “How Does Skin Color Impact Biosensors?” Sensor Tips, 12 Jan. 2023, http://www.sensortips.com/featured/how-does-skin-color-impact-biosensors/.

IJustType. “R/Books on Reddit: I’m so Tired of Authors Describing Skin like Mine …” Reddit, 2023, http://www.reddit.com/r/books/comments/131wux4/im_so_tired_of_authors_describing_skin_like_mine/.

Maira, Sunaina. “Temporary Tattoos: Indo-Chic Fantasies and Late Capitalist Orientalism” Meridians, 2002, Vol. 3, No. 1 (2002), pp. 134-160, Duke University Press

Marsh, Natasha. “There Is a Language Discrepancy between Makeup for White Skin and Makeup for Dark Skin.” Popsugar, 21 Oct. 2020, http://www.popsugar.com/beauty/makeup-shades-dark-skin-problematic-47896891.

Phoenix, Aisha. “colourism and the politics of beauty” Feminist Review, Sage Publications Ltd.,  No. 108, black british feminisms (2014), pp. 97-105.

Plenke, Max. “The Reason This ‘Racist Soap Dispenser’ doesn’t Work on Black Skin.” Mic, 10 Sept. 2015, http://www.mic.com/articles/124899/the-reason-this-racist-soap-dispenser-doesn-t-work-on-black-skin#.XeuPqZmzH.

Shabbir, Haseeb A., et al. “Deconstructing Subtle Racist Imagery in Television Ads.” Journal of Business Ethics, vol. 123, no. 3, 2014, pp. 421–36.

Uddin, Shahamat. “Colourism: A New Age of Desi Beauty Is Fighting the ‘Fair and Lovely’ Bias.” Vogue India, Vogue India, 14 Sept. 2022, http://www.vogue.in/beauty/content/colourism-a-new-age-of-desi-beauty-is-fighting-the-fair-and-lovely-bias.

Yasir, Sameer, and Jeffrey Gettleman. “India Debates Skin-Tone Bias as Beauty Companies Alter Ads.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 28 June 2020, http://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/28/world/asia/india-skin-color-unilever.html.

Bio:
Maithili Sakhrani is a third year Bachelors’ student at Sophia College (Autonomous), Mumbai. She is currently pursuing her Bachelors in English. Her areas of interest include fandom studies, subaltern studies, and journalism.

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