Vimla Patil was associated with Femina, India’s number one women’s magazine, published by the Times of India Group for 29 years. Femina is Vimla Patil's personal success story. Today, FEMINA is one of the strongest international brands with a vast readership in India and abroad. She initiated the Miss India contest in the mid-sixties for the journal and brought it to its present international stature. Vimla Patil promoted Indian textiles and fashion garments – especially handlooms – for decades by presenting over 4000 fashion shows in India and most countries of the world.
After finishing her long stint with Femina, she built a brand new career for herself as a freelance multi-mediaperson with writing, events, public relations, shows and many more activities in her portfolio!

Vimla Patil will be delighted to answer readers' questions. Please click on the comments page link at the bottom of the article to post your questions for her or to comment on her article.

Does a woman’s destiny depend upon the colour of her skin? A quick survey of all the commercials on television and ads in newspapers as well as most Bollywood films would make us believe that it does. Dark complexioned girls are shown at a distinct disadvantage in all commercials and ads. They neither get prime jobs nor the most eligible bachelors in the storyboards. Most commercials show that after using the plethora of fairness creams or soaps, they stand a better chance of making a success of their lives in career and marriage. Aishwarya Rai is the fair damsel of Bollywood among others like Kareena Kapoor, Preity Zinta and Rani Mukherjee etc. These heroines are the ‘good girls’ and portray innocence, purity, goodness and virtue because of their fair, often light-eyed appearance. This is a picture from Taal, where she played an innocent mountain girl!

Bollywood stars with a dark complexion are not losers like models but they too suffer from the colour bar. They are almost always cast in roles, which show them as heartless sirens thirsting for revenge or lusting after illicit sex. They seem to be grouped as the sensual, bitchy stars, who make only special films devoted to the darker side of the Indian woman’s persona. They are sinister beauties, bitchy and vengeful nymphomaniacs!

Scary Images Of Fair And Dark Women These images are a scary commentary on the status of the modern Indian woman and the mindset of pan-Indian societies about the colour of a woman’s complexion. The fact that fairness products reportedly have a market worth hundreds of crores of rupees not only in India, but also in Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Bangla Desh is a barometer of this tidal hunger for fairness. Therefore, there is good reason to dig down to the roots of the theory that a fair woman has a better destiny than a dark woman. Bipasha Basu belongs to the other group of dark, sinister heroines who portray sexy sirens who represent lust, revenge, evil and scheming. The other ‘bad girl’ stars in this category are Mallika Sherawat, Priyanka Chopra and Lara Dutta. Carryover From Colonialism?

Social thinkers say that this fixation is a carryover from our colonial days. Gori chitti or gori gomti are phrases, which have their roots in the British rule of India when Indians were ‘coloured’ people with a distinctly lower status. The fairer you were, the closer you were to the ruling class and therefore fairness was a desirable asset. Secondly, says social observers, fairness distinguishes various castes in India. Mostly, fair men and women are found in the higher castes. Thirdly, it is possible that with or without the British or Moghul influence, Indians always preferred fair women as brides because fairness is equal to beauty in the Indian context.

No Support For Colour Bar In History Or Scriptures

Whatever the justification of the mindset, it has little support in Indian history or mythology. Some of the most celebrated beauties of Indian mythology have been described as dark and lustrous. Lustre, rather than colour, was considered the symbol of feminine power, purity and beauty. Parvati, the goddess of power, is described as ‘yellowish coppery’ in colour rather than fair. Draupadi, one of the most beautiful women of Indian mythology, was born of fire and is described as copper-toned and burnished-gold in complexion. Sita, the heroine of the Ramayana, is earth-born and coloured like the golden soil of India.

But Advertising And Films Favour Colour Bar

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But in the present age, the ‘colour bar’ has acquired gigantic proportions with fair candidates winning international beauty crowns. Each beauty queen, beginning with Aishwarya Rai, Sushmita Sen, Diana Hayden, Yukta Mookhey, Diya Mirza and others, has been very fair, often with light eyes. Currently, top stars like Aishwarya Rai, Rani Mukherjee, Preity Zinta, Kareena Kapoor, Esha Deol and others prove the point further. Most popular models too are fair and light eyed, Aditi Govitrikar being a prime example. The darker women on the ramp, e.g. Nina Manuel, are described more as sensual rather than beautiful.

One could say this mindset is harmless as long as it does not define or limit the life of a woman. But when an Aishwarya Rai, a Rani Mukherjee, a Kareena Kapoor or a Preity Zinta is presented in film after film as a symbol of innocence, purity, beauty and – most important – as the epitome of all cherished Indian values, and a Bipasha Basu or a Mallika Sherawat is portrayed as a bitch with an insatiable hunger for evil and an uncontrollable lust for sex, then Indian society must put on the red light of warning. Is white always right and bright? Is black always shady and suspicious? We have to find answers to these questions before we use these yardsticks to define unsuspecting women!

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