Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.
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Last year I was at a social gathering with an (about 30?) year old, higher-class Indian woman who lamented that her parents refused to find her a match before her older sister. She was also talking about matchmaking sites where all sort of criteria are included, like skin tone. It was problematic that her older sister was darker skinned than she was. Wild stuff.
The older sister thing is a common story. Happened to my mom as well, she got married because her younger sister fell in love with a grad student, and they were planning to tie the knot before they moved to the States. My mom wasn't one for romance, barring some traumatizing incidents where I accidentally read her Mills and Boons novels out of boredom as a kid lmao.
The main issue is that in some more conservative parts, people get suspicious if the older sister (not a brother) isn't married yet, because it raises concerns about why that hasn't happened. Is she a bad egg? What's wrong with her? And those concerns can hamper the younger one, even if it's for entirely benign reasons.
In actual India, this isn't a big deal, not most of the time, especially if the family has a decent excuse, such as the older daughter still being in grad school, doing a PhD, being in a committed relationship and so on. But if they emigrated a while back, they probably still have older cultural attitudes ossified in them, all the more if they're explicitly looking for an arranged marriage (most Indians abroad don't do that, as far as I'm aware, it's usually acceptable for them to find their own). I'm not condoning this, I find it rather sad, but that's my understanding of the issue.
Ah, Indians of all castes and creeds are obsessed with skin tone. The fairer, the better as far as they're concerned. Skin lightening creams of dubious utility have been raking in billions, for decades.
This is an issue for both men and women alike, but a bigger deal for the latter.
Hell, even I internalized this as a kid, and until I was secure in my own skin, dark as it is (hardly the darkest, but still obviously brown), I used to be deeply jealous of my younger brother who happened to be both fairer and otherwise more classically handsome. But that's a thing of the past now, and has been for a while. I have my own personal appeal, be it when it comes to looks or otherwise. But I know I look fine. He's certainly still more handsome, but motherfucker needs it, given how bad his ADHD is, I'm praying he ends up bagging a sugar-mommy so he doesn't have to work for a living heh.
Now this hasn't changed, it's been a cultural obsession since before living memory, and I don't know how well glutathione skin lightening creams work, but if there's something coming out that obviously makes people fairer, it'll make more money than Ozempic does.
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