Our dangerous obsession with white skin

As a child, I grew up on a diet of Enid Blyton. Every summer vacation, I would look forward to reading about the adventures of the Famous Five or the Secret Seven. Admittedly, at the time, there were fewer distractions, like watching shows or texting. The only way to keep oneself occupied was either by playing sports or reading books. I don’t know what it was about those stories, but I just loved to live in them.Somehow Blyton has over the years become controversial. I remember the BBC refused to broadcast her books, because it felt they "lacked literary merit". (I really feel that one has to look at these books from a child’s point of view to discern their allure.) That’s not all though. A few years ago, the Royal Mint blocked plans to honour her with a special edition coin. They termed her stories as racist, sexist and homophobic. I think this is a bit unfair. Today, the English writer, whose books have sold more than 600 million copies, is being threatened to be ‘cancelled’. Some of it has to do with her character Noddy, who has a toy called ‘golliwog’. The origin of the term golliwog is not exactly clear, but it is a doll-like character, created by Florence Kate Upton. It has jet black skin, white eyes, exaggerated red lips and frizzy hair. There’s a theory that the term comes from a slang used by British soldiers in the 19th century to call Egyptian labourers. 'Wog' is said to be a racial epithet. medium nocaption85242849Noddy was such a staple in our lives. So much so that I remember when I went to stay with my wife’s cousin in Chelsea, a few years ago, I couldn’t help but remark: ‘Wow, the street looks out of a Noddy book’. To which he extorted, ‘exactly my thought’ when I first saw it. If my memory serves me correctly, in one of the Noddy books, the golliwog is being washed to try and change its colour. I admit, I too once tried to do that as a child with a toy, only to be admonished by my mother.When I look at the controversy surrounding Blyton, I can’t help but think about Alex Turing, whose picture, I believe, will soon appear on the 50 pound note. The WW1 codebreaker may have contributed greatly in the war against the Nazis, but he led a life of great distress. In 1954, he committed suicide, two years after his sexuality was outed and he was convicted for indecency. Over half a century later, the queen has finally pardoned him posthumously. Unquestionably, those were homophobic times. Gay sex was outlawed in England, which pushed many people to live in the closet. It was expected of society to foster racist and homophobic views.I just feel it is convenient to not see the reality and social mores of that time. Heck, I remember how my grandmother would constantly tell me to marry a woman with a fair complexion. The concept of fair and beautiful has been deeply ingrained in our minds since the time of the British. It is a colonial hangover we suffer from, even though we know that the colour of our skin depends on several pigments, like melatonin. medium nocaption85241740What has sadly become a subject of great urgency today is to have fair skin. Skin lightening is a booming business and is pipped at $31.2 billion by 2024. There are also several skin lightening remedies available in the market, but there is very little knowledge about what its application does to us.For instance, some of the products interrupt the production of melanin in the body that causes pigmentation issues; some contain medical lighteners, like hydroquinone, which are carcinogenic. Vitamin B3 and mercury are also commonly used ingredients in the products. Mercury can be especially harmful, as it can cause the onset of dementia. Another ingredient, an antioxidant called glutathione, which in small doses can help reduce skin wrinkling and lightening, studies say, is only effective in some parts of the body, and that too for not long. These treatments can also cause hypertension, heart diseases and kidney failure, and are best avoided.Besides, Indians really need to get more comfortable in their own skin. A new study by Missouri School of Journalism researcher Cynthia Frisby has found that people actually perceive "a light brown skin tone to be more physically attractive than a pale or dark skin tone".As an aside: They say that Michael Jackson used whitening agents to have white skin, but there is, in fact, a body of literature that suggests that he had vitiligo, a disease that causes you to lose your pigments. In my opinion, there is no safe and effective whitening agent. It is also time that we examine our obsession with fairness and be kinder on our past when society was not advanced as it is today. Our obsession with fairness, after all, is problematic on more than one account.Dr Altaf Patel writes on good medicine and age-old common sense(Disclaimer: The views expressed here are the author's own)From the same author:- How chemicals inside us control our emotions-Do we finally have a ‘cure’ for baldness?- Why we have stopped using our sixth sense- What if we could live forever?