Fairness is not the only certificate of beauty. Dark is also beautiful and the new social campaign #UnfairandLovely is proving it and changing the widely held belief across the world.
Three friends from University of Texas, Austin have recently started the campaign #UnfairandLovely to prove this world that the dark is beautiful. Pax Jones, a 21-year-old black student created a photo series featuring stunning images of her Sri Lankan classmates, sisters Mirusha and Yanusha Yogarajah.
Even in matrimonial sites in South Asian countries, women with “fair complexion” are in high demand than to the dark skinned women, which has resulted millions of men and women around the world have opted for bleaching their skin. This belief, shaped by societal attitudes and reinforced by media messages, is destroying the self-worth of countless people, young and old.
In this campaign they have appealed the Dark colored women to send selfies with the #UnfairandLovely who are undermined with the belief and disgust of being less beautiful than the fairer women.
Results of such misbelief is that skin whitening creams are becoming a big business across the world. Consumers are encouraged to believe that lightening their skin tone a shade or two will enable them to win ‘better’ jobs and spouses and generally improve the quality of their lives.
Over the years, various campaigners have tried to challenge this belief – they argue that beauty is more than skin deep and that dark is beautiful too. Bollywood actress Nandita Das is also associated with alike campaign named dark is beautiful.
Campaign “Unfair & Lovely”is becoming a hit on social media (Facebook, Twitter and Instagram) with #unfairandlovely – named after the highly popular Indian skin-lightening cream Fair and Lovely.
How it all started: Pax told when she was clicking images of Mirusha and Yanusha, they faced absurd comments. She clicked their pictures and they both commented colorism is a social evil underneath. While posting this image on social media many dark colored women started commenting and connecting. This resulted for us to start this campaign under #UnfairandLovely. Pax says it’s a platform for the dark women across the world, which aim to terminate the discrimination for dark colored people. People across the world are supporting the campaign and it’s becoming a hit on Instagram.
“In college, I was abused by a South Asian person who had lighter skin. And someone once threw a bleach balloon at me.” Such incidents are deeply humiliating says Mirusha Yogarajah to BBC.
“We wanted to start a conversation and I think we have succeeded in that” says Ms Jones.
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