在有色主义偏见的社会矢志追求浅肤色:是心结根深蒂固,还是无知痴迷?

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  “Pining for a lighter skin, looking for whitening cosmetics, feeling envious of those who are fair in complexion,” that is usually how most young women feel in India. They are obsessed with the idea that somehow or other those sporting a fair skin are superior to those with dark skins.
  Whiter skin supremacy is infested in the Indian mindset in a large way, unlike other serious social issues. They are also convicted of the notion that a fair complexion skin equates with the perception of beauty regardless of a person’s healthy figure with symmetrical features.
  Most parents are averse to expose their children to sun light for fear of their skin being tanned. They even seek Divine intervention to prevent their children becoming darker in complexion. Some parents and adults exhibit their preferences by showing partiality towards lighter skinned children, sometimes to the extent of neglecting their darker skinned ones. These practices in turn develop an ingrained attitude in the children’s mindset that a fair skin is associated with love, care and beauty.
  “渴望亮白肤色,寻找美白化妆品,妒忌那些肤色白皙的人”,这通常就是印度年轻女性的想法。她们某种程度上痴迷地以为,浅肤色优于暗肤色。
  与其他严重的社会问题不同,印度人很大程度上对浅肤色偏爱有加。她们也对这样一种观点深信不疑,即,不管你体型是否匀称,五官是否对称,只要你肤色白皙,别人就认为你漂亮。
  大多数父母怕孩子晒黑,总设法让孩子远离太阳暴晒。为防止孩子肤色变暗,她们甚至寻求神助。一些父母和成年人在该方面的偏爱表现为对长得白的孩子爱护有加,某种程度上对长得黑的孩子有些漠视。因而,这些做法便在孩子们的心中深深扎根,认为长得白的孩子就会得到更多的爱、关心,就更加美丽。
  Discrimination based on skin color is very much pervasive in Indian society. Looking for a fair bride in an arrange marriage setup is very significant these days. In some cases, parents do not permit love marriage to take place where the bride is dark in complexion. This is more than evident from the matrimonial ads. Fair skinned brides are the craze. A fair skin according to the advertisers is more desirable than an overseas degree. What is hilarious is that a fair bride and a dark groom is acceptable while a dark bride and a fair groom is considered unacceptable and almost silly. Stigma attached to the pigment has an adverse effect on nuptial matters.
  Color beyond gender is increasingly prevalent. Women comprise the majority of the consumers as they wish to become fair overnight. The industry makes good money from this insatiable female craze. Men are also not above this notion of becoming fairer in complexion at present. They too are obsessed with the fair skin psyche. The conviction that being fair skinned is good, stunning, smart, adorable and guarantees more opportunities in the job and matrimonial market is encouraged and fanned by media outlets with the aid of light skinned celebrities.   肤色歧视在印度社会非常普遍。目前,说亲时寻找一个肤色白的新娘非常重要。一些情况下,肤色暗的新娘在恋爱结婚时是得不到男方父母认可的。这一点在征婚广告中反映的更加明显。肤色白的新娘颇受欢迎。一位广告商说,肤色白皙比海外学位更让人合意。滑稽的是,人们接受肤色白皙的新娘配皮肤黝黑的新郎,却不接受肤色黝黑的新娘配白皙的新郎,并觉得这样的搭配近乎愚蠢。色素特征对结婚也有不利影响。
  不管对于男性还是女性来说,肤色都成为越来越普遍的一个问题。在那些渴望一夜间变得亮白的消费者中,女性占了绝大多数。相关行业也从女性有增无减的狂热中赚了很大一笔。目前,男性也未能突破这一程式。他们也非常痴迷于拥有白皙的肤色。他们认为,肤色白是好事,有魅力,潇洒、受人喜爱,让你在就业和相亲市场中获得更多机会,他们对此深信不疑。而这一风气也借由亮白肤色的名流们的帮助,为很多媒体所吹捧,并愈演愈烈。
  Commercializing Pale skin
  浅肤色走向商业化
  Beauty industries are capitalizing on pale skin syndrome. There are thousands of skin whitening creams and capsules flooding the Indian market. On the top of this product, they have launched a vagina lightening cream in the market. This whitening wash for female’s intimate area is adding further to this harmful and miserable notion.
  Domestic brands are more popular than foreign brands in the genre of fairness creams in India. In an advertisement for a local fairness cream, a father with a young woman is lamenting for not being able to support her daughter’s marriage as the daughter’s salary is very poor. She neither gets a well paid job nor a groom because of her dark skin.
  Suggestion -- she uses the cream, becomes fairer, got a job as an air hostess with a high salary and makes her father happy.
  美容行业正利用这一浅肤色综合症,数千多种美白霜、美白剂充斥着印度整个的市场。除这些产品外,他们还向市场推出了淡化阴道色素的乳霜。用于女性私密部位的这一美白清洗产品令原本有害又让人苦不堪言的观点雪上加霜。
  在印度市场,国产品牌的美白霜比国外品牌更受欢迎。在一则当地美白霜广告中,一位年轻女性的父亲哀叹不能支持女儿的婚姻,因为她工资少得可怜。由于长得黑,她既没有一份不错的收入,也没能找到丈夫。
  建议——她使用了美白霜,皮肤变白了,找到了一个空姐的职位,报酬可观,这让她的父亲感到高兴。
  This fanaticism towards the fair skin reaches its peak in the movie industry. Bollywood, which portrays the Indian culture to the world, is bombarded with fair-skinned actors. What is more, Bollywood actors are in the forefront of promoting the sales of skin whitening lotion, creams, etc.
  In the work environment too, employers prefer to recruit fair skinned women. Some jobs like Air hostesses, stewards, receptionists and so on are literally confined to lighter skinned women. Even the media world contributes to this obsession for the white skin. Advertisement industries fully feature fair girls in magazines and catalogues. Fair complexioned girls dominate the modeling industries and beauty pageant.
  对皮肤变白的狂热追求在影视业登峰造极。宝莱坞对外界宣传印度文化的影片中,清一色全是皮肤白的演员。另外,宝莱坞演员本身也在异常活跃地推销美白露、美白霜等美白产品。
  在职场中,雇主们也倾向招聘皮肤白的女性。甚至媒体界也在对痴迷美白这一观点推波助澜。广告业杂志与宣传册上刊登的也都是肤色白皙的女郎。模特业和选美比赛也以白皙女性为主。
  Discrimination based on colorism
  有色主义歧视   This fascination for the lighter skin manifesting a sign of discriminatory practice is a global and social epidemic. The new Miss America Nina Davuluri, the first Indian to be crowned, encountered bitter racial remarks from Americans for her complexion. This is a very good example to prove discrimination based on skin color. The treatment of African students in India at times leading to rapes and death is a manifestation of deep rooted racism in Indian society. This is despite the advances of science and culture consciousness. Racism and obsession with white skin color present in our psyche, and we have to break out of this shackle.
  This obsession is plagued the world and the division between fair skin and dark skin has become pervasive. This ugly reality has become a serious issue with the women and men in Nigeria. The business of bleaching cosmetics is flourishing, and the women are in a greater haste to lighten their pigment. Retaining black makes them feel grotesque and incapable. This wrong perception has resulted in an inordinate craving for skin-whiteners among the Nigerian women.
  对浅肤色的迷恋表明了歧视的存在,这在世界和社会中流传很快。新一届美国小姐妮娜·达瓦鲁瑞是第一位荣膺冠军的印度人。她就曾因为肤色遭受了美国人种族偏见的尖刻指责。这是证明肤色歧视的一个极好的例子。非洲留学生在印度的待遇——时有遭强奸和致死案例,都表明了印度社会根深蒂固的种族主义倾向。尽管科学和文化意识方面取得了进步,但我们心中仍滞留着种族主义和浅肤色的观点,我们必须要打破这一桎梏。
  这一执念正困扰着世界,对黑、白肤色的分歧已非常普遍。这一丑陋的现实对尼日利亚的女性和男性都带来了严重的问题。漂白化妆品业正如火如荼,女性们更是马不停蹄地去淡化色素。保留黑肤色让她们感到怪异和无能为力。这一错误观点使得尼日利亚的女性对美白产品的狂热达到了无以复加的程度。
  This infatuation for a fair skin is affecting the mentality of women, which in turn create negative self perception among women. The caste system and the stranglehold of colonialism, paved the way for White-man Supremacy, created the desire for a whiter skin in the minds of the colonized. It is time for us to realize that this narrow standard of measuring female beauty or human beauty in general does not lie on the color of a skin nor is it not limited by color.
  As Denis Leary, an American actor, comedian, writer and director has said: “Racism is not born folks, it is taught.”
  对浅肤色的痴迷也在影响着女性的心态,进而让女性们产生了负面的自我认知。种姓制度和殖民主义的束缚,为白人至上铺平了道路,在被殖民者心中则产生了对浅肤色的渴求。现在我们该认识到这样一个事实:总体上衡量女性美或人性美的狭义标准不在于肤色,也不受制于肤色。
  正如美国演员、喜剧演员、作家和导演丹尼斯·利瑞所说,“人们的种族主义不是生来就有,而是后天学会的”。
  Indians can emulate the “Black is Beautiful” movement. Black is beautiful is a cultural movement that was started in the US in the 1960s by black leaders (Afro Americans) and later spread to much of Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean as well the black Diaspora in Europe.   This movement works against the notion in many world cultures that black people’s natural features such as skin color and hair are not beautiful or just ugly. The Black is beautiful movement encourages men and women to stop “relaxing” their hair and attempting to lighten or bleach their skin. It is also true that people with white skin in Europe or US like to acquire darker skin color through sun tanning or by artificial means.
  Parents, media, advertisements and youth groups should raise awareness about the negative and denigrating consequences of our fixation with the white skin and its racist roots. In India insane beauty ideals of paler skin encouraged by media, society and culture are not getting faded but rather becoming more and more omnipresent. It is time that we go back to the old adage: beauty is only skin deep: handsome is as handsome does.
  印度人可效仿“黑就是美”运动。这一运动是一种文化运动,由黑人领导者(非裔美国人)于20世纪60年代在美国发起,后来扩展到非洲、拉丁美洲和加勒比海以及欧洲的非裔犹太人离散区。
  这一运动反对一些世界文化中描述黑人自然特征的观点,如认为黑人的肤色和头发不美或者非常丑陋。“黑就是美”运动鼓励男性和女性停止“拉直”头发和试图淡化或使肤色变白的做法。它也赞同欧洲或美国人通过晒太阳或通过人工方式得到深肤色。
  父母,媒体,广告和年轻群体应该就我们对白肤色定位产生的负面与诋毁后果,还有种族主义根源提高认识。印度对于浅肤色的病态审美观得到媒体、社会和文化的支持,这一观点没有消失,相反却变得越来越普遍。我们该回到那个古老格言:美是肤浅的,行为美才是真美。
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