In most professions your looks don't matter at all . In certain businesses it may matter as to how presentable you are but certainly not whether you are of light complexion . In professions such as modelling and acting though ( acting in movies not the much forgotten stage acting ) it has increasingly started to become relevant ( if it was nor already so) as to how fare you are - at least in this country . It's sad but true that a fair model is more likely to get a chance to act in a T.V commercial more easily than her/his (it's more her and less his) darker skinned counterpart. It's sad because to some extent God has made it so . To any Indian eye a fair complexioned individual has always seemed more attractive than a not so fair individual with equally blessed facial features - and this is something we can't do much about . That's just the way we see and interpret attractiveness and fairness ranks very high on that index.The Indian pshyche has actually been brought up on such stereotypes and much as we may wish it away it's perhaps going to remain a part and parcel of our outlook in the near future . Guys are still going to talk about the new fair girl in the campus as being more desirable . This explains why there aren't too many successful dark-skinned models around barring a few like Bipasha Basu and Sameera Reddy . And they don't have it coming too easy for them either . One has to stand up against taunts such as "kaali billi " and the likes to really make it big . And you really need all of Sushmita Sen's grace, elegance and smartness to stand up against the ultra- fairskinned Aishwarya to make the jury believe you are better (not to take anything away from Aishwarya- she can still stake a claim to the world's "most beautiful" tag) . The point is in the glamour world you need to have additional gifted features to be sucessful if you are not outright fair and the NRI guy irrespective of what complexion he has is still going to seek out that " fair beautiful" bride in the wedding season . So what is to be done about this bias based on color? It's strange that we don't see much literature on this existing bias. Perhaps people don't feel it as much as I do .
I think only from the perspective of being fair(by this fair I mean reasonable) one should judge a person's beauty quotient not only from her fairness but also other features like the body structure, how she looks as a whole . It may not come to us naturally as we can't just be rational all the time . Sometimes our eyes and inherent desires get the better of us but at least this way we are being more fair than just saying "forget it she/he is dark". Even in the glamor world I think more scientific methods of judging facial beauty like " symmetry is face" should be taken into account rather than just how visually attractive a model is . That will then be the new definition of beauty and later the correct definition of beauty.
But such a suggestion seems contrary to anyone's understanding, I'm sure . The bias is even proven by a recent British research . Seems like we will have to live with the unfair advantage for the foreseeable future
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