KARACHI CHRONICLE: Of course, fair is beautiful

Of course, fair is beautiful. Unfortunately mothers-in-law demand 'gori larki' for their sons' brides. They have made girls with dark complexion afraid of being left on the shelf. In desperation, the girls use beauty products that promise to make them fair of skin. This has become a serious health issue as many local beauty creams which are skin whiteners have harmful steroids and toxic metals. This was highlighted by beauty experts at a briefing at the Karachi Press Club recently.
The problem has reached alarming levels and taken the form of an epidemic, they said. A specialist of skin diseases said she examined 12 to 15 cases daily involving patients whose skin was ruined following prolonged use of substandard whitening creams. It was a horror story of the harm these beauty creams can do. The face breaks out in acne, the skin becomes thin and sensitive to light causing sunburn. Treatment is long-drawn and the skin may never return to its original healthy condition.
The damage is not just skin deep (excuse the pun). Citing some studies the experts said toxic metals like mercury penetrate into the skin and over time its higher accumulation in the body could damage the heart and affect the foetus of a pregnant woman. Before hearing this, who would have believed a mere skin application of a beauty cream could cause such tragedy.
The experts who spoke included beauticians and doctors. They have approached the Pakistan Standards and Quality Control Authority (PSQCA) which seems unaware of the epidemic, hence shows no urgency to ban the beauty creams. No law exists to ban the sale of harmful cosmetics. A doctor, who belongs to the PSQCA, said notice had been taken by the authority but, as with any vital action affecting the masses, the ministries concerned, including those which deal with health and drugs, were dragging their feet on giving the go-ahead to PSQCA to impose a ban.
If you ask me, there seems to be a nefarious reason why no action is being taken. For one, these beauty creams are the most popular Pakistani cosmetic, earning millions for the manufacturers. Television advertising of the creams is not cheap, but you will have noted advertisements of beauty creams on every TV channel. That tells you how popular the skin whitening creams are. So who knows, but one may suspect, the manufacturers have bribed the ministries concerned to do nothing to initiate a ban on the cosmetic.
The experts at the KPC wanted people to change their social mentality that fair is beautiful. This will not happen because fair is beautiful. It is attractive not only to mothers-in-law, but to the bridegrooms, to storytellers who write love stories, the models on the catwalk, the heroines selected for TV serials and cinema. To look fair of skin is an obsession in our social order.
To change that mentality would need massive education. All skin colours are beautiful, but we do not see beauty in any except the white colour. Laila in the famous love story was dark; supermodel Iman is a black woman. Iman launched a cosmetic range for people who are not fair and whose skin colour could range from light brown to black. Would you believe it, these cosmetics though they became popular the world over, never reached Pakistan? Women here plaster their face with pancake makeup meant for fair skins. The result is ghastly. ome of them do look like Japanese geishas. Most beauty parlors also paint the face of brides in this manner.
Fair has always been beautiful, but never before was it the chief criteria for selecting a suitable bride. The criteria used to be family background. Then it did not matter if the girl was dark and the boy fair or vice versa. Wealth was the second reason for colour-mix of the couple in the olden days. Today there are not many who are filthy rich, nor families with social, moral or culture antecedents of virtue. That has made the choice of a suitable spouse entirely superficial: the colour of the skin.
In Pakistan majority of marriages are arranged. Hence the demand for a 'gori larki' has virtually forced the use of skin whiteners. According to the experts at the KPC briefing, it is not always the girls (some boys even) who want to use the skin whiteners. They have been forced to do so by the parents. Society at large is not aware of the harm the cosmetic can cause. Ignorance leads them to urge their marriageable children to use the skin whiteners. There is only one way to end the epidemic: ban the cosmetics and ban the TV advertisements too.