Why do I not like dark skinned people?
On an average, I like fair skinned people more than dark skinned people. I don’t like myself too because of my darker complexion. Back then when there were no products for men in the market, I was secretly using Fair and Lovely. But was worried friends would mock me for being feminine. Over time I was exposed to the idea of brown is beautiful & agitations to ban products that promote fairer skin as better. Ideas like, “we have been conditioned to look down upon dark skin because of depiction of fair gods and dark demons, most of the actresses who have been glamourized are fair skinned and these fair and lovely ads” . But that, I think is one side of the story. It’s not just nurture, there is an element of nature as well to it I believe.
Just talking about the looks, we like some one because the rays that reflect from their face get registered in our brain and that would send out some signals, positive / negative which decides the attractiveness. The attractiveness depends on some of the prebaked ideas in your minds pushed in by society as well as what light does your brain register.
Recently I was watching “Life in Color” and that changed my perspective. There are so many examples which talk about the difference in perception among different species. Humans can see all three primary colors, but deer are color blind to red color. So they cannot see orange tigers as clearly as humans can. This puts deer at a disadvantage and tigers as perfectly camouflaged killer machines.
In this color context, I can’t talk about other people, I feel I don’t see facial features clearly in a dark skinned person as compared to fair skinned in real world lighting. I think even the pre-filter camera technology had similar issues. As a kid, it was tough for me to differentiate African faces compared to Caucasian faces in movies. I feel there is an element of nature which is the foundation for this bias of liking fair skinned people.
P. S : I do like good number of dark skinned people too! Just for the looks, not because of behavior or spending more time with them.
