Indian film stars vs regular Indians

In a recent discussion in the comments section of this blog, it was mentioned that "... Indian actors and actresses don't look like Indians... they might as well be another race."
It was also pointed out that while a Tamil like Kema Rajandran might have some difficulties finding modelling work in Australia, it wouldn't necessarily be easy in India either, given that country's overwhelming preference for light skin.

Coincidentally, this story ran in the UK's Daily Mail this week as well:

'You never see dark-skinned girls in TV ads': India's top models on how the country's fashion industry STILL champions fair skin

Two top Indian models have spoken out against what they believe is racism against darker-skinned women in the country's fashion industry.
Dipannita Sharma and Carol Gracias say they are losing out on top jobs because an increasing amount of Indian designers are casting lighter-skinned models.
Ms Sharma said that the whole country was so 'obsessed' with fair skin, that a shift in attitude would take years.
The 35-year-old, who is also a television star, told The Telegraph: 'It's not just the fashion industry, India per se is obsessed with white skin. We will take another hundred years to completely get over it.'
She continued: 'The industry doesn't openly agree that preferring foreign models over Indian models just for the skin tone is racism. It has some kind of fairness obsession. One could have understood, if it was about getting supermodels of international fame or to work in India but that's not happening, it's just they want fairer skin on the Indian ramps.'
Ms Gracias echoed her fellow model in an interview with the Hindustan Times. She revealed that she makes just $1,000 per runway show compared to top international models like Kate Moss and Adriana Lima, who can command between $20,000 and $150,000.
She explained: 'The major reason for this wide gap is that Indian models are not valued so much when it comes to commercial projects. You never see a dark-skinned girl on TV ads and that's where the lucrative work is. Everyone uses fair-skinned girls, people use skin-lighteners like Fair and Lovely. I don't - maybe I would have been fair and lovely by now.'
Pranab Awasti, of Delhi's Glitz Modelling agency, attributed the controversial issue to the country's 200-year history under British colonial rule. He told the Hindustan Times: 'Indians in general have that inferiority complex, we have had a hangover about fair skin, since the British left India. The idea of fairness is an Indian concept and it needs to change. It is an inherent thing in Indians to see white as beautiful and black as ugly... we have this concept in our minds that only fair-skinned people can be models.'
Others argue in an industry that worships size-zero, skin colour is not an issue and most local models are simply too curvy to make the cut.
Runway choreographer Tanya Lefebvre said: 'The girls are not tall enough and have varying body shapes.'
Skin lightening controversy is not new for the Indian fashion industry. Editors of Elle India were accused digitally lightening the skin colour of Bollywood star Aishwarya Rai Bachchan for the magazine's December 2010 issue, reigniting the decades-long debate.

Ok, so for context, here are photos of Sharma and Gracias. Given your knowledge of what Indians look like, would you class them as "dark", as Indians go?

Because in the Indian context, they are considered dark. Too dark.

A couple of points about the article. I disagree that the obsession with fair skin is related to British colonialism to any great degree. Preference for "lightness" does not equate to preference for "whiteness". It's far older than British rule and has its basis in the caste system. The conquerors of India have historically come from the north (Indo-Europeans, Muslim Moghuls), and the darker tones of the Southern Indians have acquired a negative association, enshrined by caste. It is probably overlain with an element of the same colour prejudice that occurs in East Asia, which is related to social class and occupation (dark skin = tan from working out in the sun = being a commoner).

Realistically, the likes of Sharma, Gracias and Rajandran are not really dark, when one considers the diversity of phenotypes across India. They are probably in the middle of the skin tone range. The ideal look for Indian celebrities is at the pale end of the spectrum. Male actors can to some extent get away with a degree of swarthiness that females can't. Still, in a country with significant prejudices against its Muslim minority and hatred towards its Muslim neighbour Pakistan, some of the biggest male stars of Bollywood are Muslims (Aamir Khan, Salman Khan, Shah Rukh Khan), and I wonder how much that is related to their "Aryan"-ness.

I thought it'd be a nice experiment to compare Indian actresses with regular Indians. To show the contrast most clearly, I've focused on Tamils, who are from South India (and Sri Lanka) and are one of the darker-skinned ethnic groups in India. Yet if you looked at Tamil actresses, you might think differently. These images are from http://www.tamilactresses.net/:

By contrast, these are the first 15 images I found from googling "Tamil people". This is obviously not any kind of rigorous scientific study, but the contrast is obvious.

But these swarthy average Tamils need not fear. Bollywood superstar Shah Rukh Khan is here to help.

Those ads made me want to vomit. I prefer this one (a spoof of the second ad):

I've written more about this issue in this earlier post:

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