5 Major Mental Health Issues That The World Is Facing Today | Divya Toshniwal |

'Fair and Lovely' is a household name . In India fairness cream has meant Fair and Lovely. In the recent years though there has been a lot of competition in the market but Fair and Lovely has still been the most popular. Fairness is an obsession in India. If you are not fair you won't get married in a good family , you won't get a good job , people will not respect you etc.etc. In short fairness is the key to achieving anything and everything here. Fairness is a synonym to beauty now .

When these creams weren't enough , the doctors now have also come up with fairness treatments that would kill the melanin pigment in your skin to make your skin bright and glowing. But the question of concern is "WHY?"

Even when you go for make up shopping in India the darker shades of foundations are not even available . Because make up is suppose to make you ' Fair ', so why the darker shades. We also treat the guests of our country differently . The white skinned foreigners are treated differently than the dark skinned foreigners.

Who said Fairness is Beauty??

This fairness obsession has been the root of various social evil including bullying , dowry system , body image issues , depression, ad much more. It has impacted us for more than one generation. We have been depicting fairness as not only beautiful but also kind, smart, soft, powerful , intelligent and all other good characteristics that one can have in a personality.

A recent interview the scriptwriter for such advertisements where fair is shown as lovely backed off and said that he has realized that the stuff he was trying to sell does not resonate with his beliefs and is impacting the next generation in a negative manner.

Beauty lies in the eye of the beholder.

Its high time for us to realize this and move away from this meaningless obsession. It does not matter what the color of your skin is , if your heart is pure you are beautiful. No fair does not mean intelligent and smart and whatever the fairness cream marketers are claiming it to mean. Fair is just a category of skin colour and here  we have many colours . No, fair does not imply a particular personality type even if it has been portrayed so in our ancient text . The dark and fair both are worshiped. Kali and Parvati both are worshiped . 

-Divya

P.S. Don't just look beautiful , feel beautiful.

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5 Major Mental Health Issues That The World Is Facing Today | Divya Toshniwal |