Last week’s furore over the L’Oreal ad featuring a lighter skinned Beyonce is reflective of a worrying trend in India and Bollywood to equate fair skin with beauty. “It’s bizarre this obsession with fair skin. It reflects a lack of intelligence; something is wrong with their heads,” Bipasha Basu, heroine of this week’s release Bachna Ae Haseeno (‘Beware you beauties’), told me when I asked her why some Indians prefer light skinned beauties.

Basu, a leading Bollywood actress, is often described as ‘dusky’ due to her less than ‘wheatish’ complexion so typical of most Bollywood leading ladies. In fact, Basu had a spat with the anorexic looking green-eyed Kareena Kapoor some years ago when they worked together in ‘Ajnabee’. Kareena had allegedly called Bipasha a ‘kaali-billi’ (black cat).

Bollywood stars also endorse skin-lightening creams which are very popular products in India. These creams are not only aimed at women. Shah Rukh Khan advertises ‘Fair and Handsome’ for men and I asked him directly why he was doing this. The ‘King Khan’s’ reply was defensive and not entirely convincing: “I don’t think like that and I am not perpetuating this. I like tanned complexion in men and women to be honest. I am not fair myself. The whole idea is to say to men in India that they need to look after their skin.” Whatever became of dark and handsome?

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