Girls growing up in Tamil Nadu might be familiar with the phrase, “Karuppa irunthaalum kalaiya irrukiraa” (she is pretty although she is dark). The state is hardly the sole part of India afflicted by intense colourism, but perhaps it is the only one where dark-skinned men are celebrated in popular culture while such women find little representation.
The thriving Tamil film industry, known for its innovation and talent, has continued to favour light-skinned female actors over darker women, especially in recent decades, even poking fun at them in comedy tracks. But representation matters, especially for young people as they form ideas of self-worth and body image. With matrimonial columns filled with persons seeking ‘fair’ or ‘wheatish’ brides, many resort to skin-lightening treatments, although fairness creams now go by euphemisms promising “glowing” rather than lighter skin.
While some talented darker female actors such as Aishwarya Rajesh have given award-winning performances, high-profile representation of darker-skinned Indian women is coming from abroad. This is not to say that Western media industries are not rife with colourism, but that opportunities can be created with just a little bit of imagination. While actor-writer-showrunner Mindy Kaling’s (herself part Tamil) Never Have I Ever featured a young Sri Lankan Tamil-Canadian Maitreyi Ramakrishnan as a lead, the second season of Shonda Rhimes’s mammoth success Bridgerton features two British-Tamil women in lead roles, Simone Ashley and Charithra Chandran.
All three women would be considered as meeting popular conventions of beauty, yet they offer only rare sparks of representation to women like them. It is perhaps not surprising that Kaling and Rhimes are women of colour themselves, seeking to fill a need often overlooked in an industry dominated by white men. Closer home, Tamil filmmakers do not lack imagination or skill. Having attempted to challenge class, caste and even patriarchal norms, it is time they started challenging the colourism that has come to be reproduced in their films.