Color me surprised!

We had diner one night with one of our local friends. We talked about arranged marriages and what factors were important in choosing a good wife/husband. Among wealth, class, etc, color of the skin ranked really high. To my surprise, this was really important!

There is a beauty myth well entrenched in the Bangladeshi culture: Fairness is beauty and a lighter complexion is the ticket to a better life. The Bangladeshi  culture attaches a certain prestige to whiteness.

You could speculate that colonizers’ complexions became standards for beauty for the colonized. Or you could blame the “class complex,” because those who are from a lower class tend to be darker because they’re exposed to the sun more in their work. This would link whiter complexions to higher education and class. Or you could blame this on the white colonists: the Brits created racial boundaries by instilling the attitude that if you are not white, you will always be inferior. 

Dhaka is lined with massive billboards advertising Fair and Lovely’s bleaching skincare products. The white skinned beauty peering from it has, to me at least, very little in common with majority of the people you see on the streets. In Bangladesh to be called kalua (Bengali for dark) is derogatory, while gori (white skin) is synonymous with being beautiful.
As for my personal opinion, I can't decide whether this obsession with fair complexion is a colonial hangover or just a case of wanting what you do not have (I can vividly remember there is tanning saloon at every corner in the US and being sun kissed means a sexy look).

But above all, I can barely hide my feelings of betrayal and disappointment: I truly believed my Deshi friends loved me for the size of my heart, not for the color of my skin :)