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Out of Focus by Nimanthi Perera-Rajasingham

South Asians seem quite obsessed with having pale skin as a primary criterion for a woman's beauty. Often, women I spoke to, seem quite convinced that fairness was aesthetically more appealing, and go through various experiments and use numerous untested products to make themselves more pale. However, looking into the history of this fetish shows otherwise. Preference for a certain type of skin may often reflect societal attitudes towards certain groups.

A 16th century reference to skin colour comes with Shakespeare. "It seems she hangs upon the cheek of night, as a rich jewel upon an Ethiop's ear" are some of the first words Romeo utters on seeing Juliet at the Capulet ball. Here, she is compared to a rich jewel which sparkles all the more because it is set against the black skin of an Ethiopian. Even here, is Juliet's pale and white skin an advantage? We note that in The Merchant of Venice Portia rejects the Prince of Morocco as a suitor for his 'complexion', and Othello gives us ample opportunity to observe certain racist attitudes of Europeans towards Africans that involved skin colour.

Yet, Europeans at the time preferred pale skin for reasons other than to separate themselves from their African or Asian counterparts.

We know that by the 19th century pale, fair skin was considered essential for women to be considered beautiful. Sun-baked, freckled women were hardly attractive, and even when European women came to African and South Asian countries, they always carried a parasol along with their stuffy warm clothes to avoid the sun.

There have been suggestions that at the time only the rich could afford to be pale, or that only wealthy men could afford to have white-skinned wives and mistresses. Often the lower-classes could not afford such luxuries, and in rural and agricultural England/Europe, women had to work in the fields and were quite sunburnt. So skin colour boasted class, wealth, power- families that could afford carriages, and whose women never needed to walk or endure any form of outdoor labour.

How the tables have turned today, for now Europeans tan as much as possible, and come to tropical countries to sit under the sun and brown their skins. How often have Sri Lankans gone down to Hikkaduwa or Unawatuna, to see suddhas tanning for all their worth, in order to go back and boast brown skin?

Why this change today then? Why is it that the Western beauty ideal is no longer lily white, but tanned and healthy looking? Again, in Europe as these countries became industrialized, lower classes were stuck in offices, factories and indoors, and barely had the chance to see the sun.

Then, it was only the wealthy who could afford the money and the leisure to travel to sunnier climes or sit out in the sun. Hence, brown (but not too dark) skin became beautiful as it yet again boasted class, and wealth. Today, do Sri Lankan women prefer white skin because of a certain colonial hangover that suggests the European woman to be the global ideal?

We know through African magazines and literature that often African women bleached their skin and straightened their hair to look more white and European. Do we use various cancerous bleaching products here for the same purpose? For the very sun we advertise to lure in foreign tourists seems anathema to our own women who carry umbrellas and curse any tan.

The skin issue is a complex one. There are definite suggestions that globally the ideal seems to be more and more a preference for white skin. Pop idol Michael Jackson has displayed clearly his deep dislike for his own dark skin. His transformation from the dark-skinned curly haired man in the '80s to the pale , skinny, straight haired man today suggests that skin colour affects not only women but men as well.

This is but an example of other biases against black skin, for how is it that beauty contests have rarely elected black women as their queens? Often, even the South Asian women, notably Indian women, who win are also extremely pale skinned and definitely North Indian, or Anglo-Indian.

What's more, pale skin seems a preference for us since pre-colonial times. Sri Lankan literature boasts of women in Sri Lanka who had pale skin and breasts as white as swans. In South Asia, in India, white skin seems to reflect certain racial differences. For North Indian women have prided their white skin as a sign of their so-called Aryan ancestry over the darker skinned Dravidians.

Hence, the superiority of the Aryans was established through their skin colour and was reflected via North Indian women and their pale beauty. Is the Sri Lankan obsession, possibly also because of this mythical Aryan- Dravidian divide? Hence, today there are numerous products that attempt to help women obtain the pallor they desire. Often these products are also bleaching products that can be dangerous to the skin and have been strongly associated with skin cancer.

The damage such products can do to women is enormous, and not simply related to health issues. Often, advertisements suggest that dark-skinned women cannot obtain husbands and be happy in life. Alternately, if they can possibly, through some means, become fairer then, they will be transformed to ideal, beautiful women, full of confidence and with a host of admirers. Hence, if women are experiencing pangs of loneliness and low-self-esteem, then the solution suggested is a skin bleach to solve all problems. There have even been advertisements that suggest that a woman's unemployment problems can be resolved once her skin is whitened.

Young girls are often indoctrinated into thinking they are beautiful or not according to their skin colour, and not because of more valuable attributes to judge their worth. If beauty is in the eye of the beholder, then various types of beauty and various skin colours can co-exist and be equally appealing. Let not media gimmicks and certain historical biases influence you to harm yourself and those around you. The '70s American slogan, prompted strongly by the civil rights' movement of the time stated that 'black was beautiful.' It is important to realize that all skin colours are acceptable and equal, and that western beauty ideals should not allow us to depreciate ourselves.

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