Women Shares Her Experience for Being Dusky

Ashitha Jayaprakash has shared her story about growing up in Kerala and all the tips she had heard to lighten her skin tone from her mother, grandmother, friends and even strangers. She has chosen for herself the darkest shade in the Lakme’s soufflé foundation to glow up her face, which would leave a bright yellow tint on her face.

A few years back we all have seen ‘Fair and Lovely’s fairness cream advertisement that you have to have a fair skin tone if you want success in life. Though our beauty industry had moved forward from that concept to a concept where beauty products are used by brown-skinned people too.

Every advertisement that we see on TV, in newspapers and magazines for any beauty product is advertised by a fair-skinned model and the only aim of these advertisements are to get fairer. We all have also witnessed the effects of these ads on our teenagers and young adults. It affects our mental health hugely. They have always taught in their homes about this wrong beauty standard that white-skinned people are beautiful and which is not white, that is not beautiful.

Some has shared their stories that these issues had led them to suffer from lower self-confidence and inferiority complex. The effect is deep-rooted and also affects the interpersonally in their relationships. People who do not have a fair skin tone has to work hard to gain self-confidence. They have made themselves believe that they will also get the same kind of opportunities as people have because they have fair skin.

Arzi Adbi, Chirantan Chatterjee, Zoe Kinas, Clarissa Cortland and Jasjit Singh are the name of the people who have researched how a woman feel disempowered because of darker skin tone.