Actress Bipasha Basu, who started her career as a model before switching to films, shared her personal experience of skin colour bias over the years in a lengthy Instagram post on Friday. Bipasha found herself in a retrospective mood following Hindustan Unilever's decision to drop the word "fair" from its "Fair & Lovely" range of products, which has prompted reactions from several celebrities, including actor Abhay Deol, who has a been a strong campaigner of anti-colourism. Bipasha, whose hometown is Kolkata, joined modelling at an early age when she was described as "dusky" - a word which stayed with her in the years that followed. But first, the adjective "dusky" was assigned to her by family members, she said. "From the time I was growing up I heard this always: 'Bonnie is darker than Soni. She is little dusky na?' Even though my mother is a dusky beauty and I look a lot like her. I never knew why that would be a discussion by distant relatives when I was a kid." Bonnie is Bipasha's nickname while Soni is the nickname of her elder sister Bidisha.
"Soon at 15/16 I started modelling and then I won the supermodel contest... all newspapers read: 'Dusky girl from Kolkata is the winner'. I wondered again why 'dusky' is my first adjective?" Bipasha wrote in her post and spoke about the obsession over her skin tone being "exotic" when she worked as a model abroad: "Then I went to New York and Paris to work as a model and I realised my skin colour was exotic there and I got more work and attention because of it. Another discovery of mine."
Bipasha Basu, who stepped into Bollywood with 2001 movie Ajnabee, added that to the Hindi film audience, she got introduced as the "dusky girl": "Once I came back into India and film offers started and finally I did my first film and from an absolute ajnabee to Hindi film industry, I suddenly was accepted and loved. But the adjective stayed which I started liking and loving by then. Dusky girl wows the audiences in her debut film."
Bipasha said, in Bollywood, her skin colour set her apart from her contemporaries as it was perceived as a complementary factor to her "sex appeal". "In most of my articles for all the work I did, my duskiness seemed to be the main discussion. It attributed to my sex appeal apparently. And sexy in Bollywood started getting accepted widely. I never really understood this. To me sexy is the personality not just the colour of your skin... why my skin colour only sets me apart from the conventional actresses at that time? But that's the way it was. I didn't really see much of difference but I guess people did. There was a strong mindset of 'beauty' and how an actress should look and behave. I was different as it was pointed out. Didn't really stop me from being and doing all that I loved," read an excerpt from her note.
Bipasha also revealed having rejected several skin care brand endorsements for almost the past two decades: "Many skin care endorsements with loads of money was offered to me in the last 18 years (some were very tempting)... but I stuck to my principle always."
Bipasha concluded her post with these words: "All this needs to stop. This wrong dream that we are selling... that only fair is lovely and beautiful when the majority of the country is brown skinned. It's a deep rooted stigma. It's a mammoth step from the brand... and other brands should follow in the same footsteps soon."
Read her entire post here:
Bipasha Basu was last seen in the 2015 movie Alone, after which she was a presenter on the TV show Darr Sabko Lagta Hai. Bipasha Basu is best known for her role in films such as Dhoom 2, Dum Maaro Dum, Race, Omkara, Bachna Ae Haseeno and Raaz.
