Aishwarya Rai Image by getty images

By Maia Efrem May 3, 2012

Many little girls grow up on Disney princess cartoons. I grew up on Bollywood films, dancing to the Hindi music, the lyrics to which I had memorized by the time I was six. I was raised in the 1980s in the former Soviet republic of Georgia, and Bollywood’s charming wholesomeness was imported in droves. I’d wager that it was Bollywood’s lack of anti-Communist messaging — rather than its family-friendly nature — that appealed most to the Soviet government.

Only as I got older did I realize that those Indian heroines I idolized were, and still are, stuck in a post-colonial culture that venerates Western ideals of beauty, markets harmful skin-lightening creams and even imports British actresses and Brazilian models to play the part of Indians. They can’t speak the language? It’s nothing a voiceover can’t fix.

In what is dubbed India’s “Snow White Syndrome,” whitening creams far outsell Coca–Cola, and sales are growing at a rate of 18% a year. Recently, the already fair-skinned reigning queen of Bollywood, Aishwarya Rai, was furious over an overly airbrushed Elle cover in which her skin was lightened several shades.

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Women are not the only ones who face pressure. When my favorite Bollywood actor, Shahrukh Khan, began serving as a spokesperson for Fair and Handsome, a skin lightening cream for men, I was disgusted. The commercials for the cream always show a darker-skinned man who is mocked or unable to attract female attention until he lightens his skin.

Now, an Indian company has introduced an intimate wash meant to brighten a woman’s skin. The commercial for the wash alludes to a light-skinned couple’s marital woes — woes that apparently vanish when the private-parts wash comes into the picture.

I am Sephardi and have darker skin. So here in New York, I regularly get mistaken for South Asian. And the comments are always complimentary about the fairness of my skin — troublingly so.

And I’d venture to guess that for every Indian woman who uses creams to lighten her skin, there is probably a Jewish woman pressured into getting a nose job or Brazilian keratin treatment to straighten her hair to stick-straight perfection. When “Glee” actress Lea Michele openly discusses refusing to get a nose job, it leaves me yearning for an über-popular darker-skinned Bollywood actress who could shake Indian filmmakers into acknowledging that beauty comes in all shades.

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