Why “skin tone doesn’t matter”: Empower yourself and forget sympathy

 Why does the question arise about skin tone?

 

“Hey, is there any new reliable fairness cream in the market?”

“Is your daughter pregnant? Make her eat beetroot. Baby will be milky white”

“Is it a baby Girl? How does she look? Fair? Otherwise it will be painful getting her married. It wouldn’t have mattered much if it is a boy.”

 

Just in a span of 7 days I overheard these three conversations. I live in a metropolitan city and the participants in the conversations seemed to me belonging from upper middle class background.

Bias towards fair skin starts in the womb and then cultivates in our brain. Everything bad is dark or black in color and everything good is light or white. Racism is inherent in our subconscious mind.

 

The reality of our skin color

But why are we so much conscious about our skin tone? Please understand it is the amount of pigment called melanin in your skin and nothing else. Lesser melanin you have the lighter would be your skin tone along with some health hazards. Your skin would be vulnerable to UV radiation which may cause skin cancer and many other hyper-pigmentation disorders.

 

My experience as a dermatologist

There are so many healthy people who visit me only to become fairer. People who come to someone like me first, get the correct, honest, ethical and positive advice. I don’t believe in applying drugs to completely healthy people just to satisfy their so called relatives or friends or neighbors who force them to consult a dermatologist just to become fairer. But so very often people chose to visit unqualified doctors or dermatologists with fake degrees who without any knowledge of human body advertise themselves as beauty consultants and make false promises.

There was a female patient whose face was damaged by a fake dermatologist to an extent which was beyond recognition. She needed multiple sessions of psychiatric counselling and it took me 9 months of regular treatment to just make her look normal.

In another instance a girl went to some beauty parlor or so called skin care center to lighten her skin tone. But there was no doctor and only a bunch of ill-qualified people were doing chemical peeling and shooting lasers without proper knowledge. And God knows what they had done because she herself was not sure what kind of treatment she got and her face just became charcoal black. She consulted multiple doctors afterwards but her condition didn’t improve much. But I’m happy to share that she is now married and doing great in her life.

I just don’t want anyone spending thousands to become abnormal and then again spend thousands in trying to become normal again.

 

Social psychology behind the dark skin tone taboo

People correlate fair skin with beauty. Our minds are conditioned to believe that nobody is attracted to us if we have dark skin. We have been taught to believe since childhood that fairer skin we have more beautiful we look. Just scroll any matrimony site and you will see these words very frequently - “Groom needed for a beautiful, fair and slim bride” or sometimes “For our only son we need an original fair and naturally beautiful well-educated girl.

Beauty pageants have added to this problem as most of the selected winners used to have lighter skin tone. Indians started to win beauty contests when international cosmetic industry wanted to capture vast Indian market. This cosmetic industry made dark skinned people feel inferior with each and every ridiculous and absurd advertisements they produce. But before this market infringement weren’t Indians beautiful? They were and they are always beautiful. But have you ever thought why should these words define beauty? This billion-dollar commercial industry needs to stop misleading people and should be more socially responsible.

 

The positive side to look at

There are so many examples in ours’ as well as in other western countries where there are so many celebrities in entertainment and show-business who are incredibly famous and successful with their darker skin tone. So it’s obvious that skin tone should not matter at all in other professions as well. But it does matter because of us only. We as a whole society is responsible for this. If the situation needs to be changed, we need to change our mind first and really accept that skin tone doesn’t matter.

A person is beautiful when she has the right attitude towards himself/herself and towards life. Build your confidence, know your worth, love yourself and focus on your health. Nobody chooses a friend based on skin tone. Do we judge our parents and love them based on their skin color? It’s their love affection and care that matter to us. Try to become a good human being, try to help others and be compassionate. It is important to love yourself for who you are. Of course being fair doesn’t automatically transform you to a good human being.

You should stop seeking validation from others about your worth. Constructive criticism definitely helps you to improve yourself but do not let that make any negative impact on you. You should remind yourself of your worth and start adoring yourself. Start working on your strength and weaknesses. Give your precious time on things in your life that can be improved by determination and practice. Don’t try to change something that’s not in your control.

The conclusion

Of course you need to take care of your skin. Maintain good hygiene, have a healthy diet, spend some time regularly on exercise and if you think you have some skin disease just go to a qualified doctor for help. Just think of it this way, a person at the age of 25/26 having inferiority complex because of his/her height just doesn’t visit a doctor to increase the height. It is not because it’s not possible, rather people just don’t think it’s absolutely necessary. But with respect to skin tone people believe that it can be improved easily it’s the easiest way to success. We, the society as a whole need to work hard to change this false belief which not only incurs economic burden to society but also serious health issues as well. 

We the educated members of society need to teach our next generation to appreciate themselves no matter what their height, color or any other feature may be. Every dialogue on skin color needs to be changed and the conditioning of our next generation for favoring a fair skin tone needs to be stopped immediately because it’s already too late.