Thanks for the background info on Bollywood. I have very little feel for things Indian, and so don't follow the modern films much at all, so it's a new experience for me.
<snip to> --- In [email protected], t3rinity <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > Always in India, being fair-skinned is looked upon superior, > so models or actors with fair skin have better chances. Thats > maybe a caste thing, lower castes are often associated with > darker skin. I have been surprised how Indians call themselves > 'white' and 'black' where we just see different shades of brown. I saw the same thing in Morocco, growing up there in the early 60s. Even though most Moroccans were darker- skinned than Europeans, it was clear that their status in Moroccan society was largely determined by *how* dark their skin was. The lighter their skin, the higher the status they were perceived to have, and the "better" they were perceived to be. There was an inherent distrust of anyone with dark skin. Even back then there was a huge market in cosmetic bleaching agents and "skin lighteners." Therefore, rather than associate this preference for light skin to dark with India and its ideas of caste, I suspect that it may just be a (sadly) universal trend in human beings, period. Changing whole sets of facial *features* via cosmetic surgery to make them appear more Western, however, is another thing entirely. That's a more disturbing trend IMO. Obviously, I've been tripping on this idea of cosmetic surgery lately. I find the whole phenomenon fascinating, and strangely related to two different approaches to the spiritual quest. So I'll follow up this post with one I made to another forum, which generated some interesting comments there. Maybe it'll do so here as well. Then again, maybe monkeys will fly out of my surgically-lifted butt. :-)
