White

As a little girl I loved reading fairytales like most other girls do. I had a huge doll collection too that included Barbie and Sindy dolls. The skimpily clad dolls with perfect stats with plastic smiles (pun intended) were one of my most prized possessions. I still do not figure out why they catch every girl's fancy. Probably these dolls are just thrust upon us as little kids and we're made to believe that we being girls have to play with Barbies because GI-Joes is meant for guys.

Little do we realise that these perfect figures have such a wrong impression on the

minds of little girls on whom the concept of "beauty" is bombarded at such a young age. I've seen kids as young as 8 and 9 years fussing about the way they look and about the fact that their "diet" will go for a toss if they indulge in a piece of chocolate cake. The trend disturbs me.

Coming to fairytales, I feel stories such as Snow White and other princesses emphasise way too much on the aspect of beauty. Infact, most of the fairytales will describe the protagonist as a young, FAIR girl. They are nothing short of print versions of the Fair and Lovely advertisements since Prince Charming will always end up choosing the fair maiden.

The notion that fair is beautiful has been embedded in our psyche and the TV adverts reinforce the idea. Ads that show that the only prerequisite to get your dream job(or man) is having fair skin. Especially in majority North Indian families where the elders of the house will tell you go for the girl who has a lighter complexion even though the 'darker' girl may be twice as better as the former.

We live in a country where an ordinary looking fair skinned foreigner is considered far superior than the most beautiful Indian people. It is time that stereotypes and mentalities change.

After all beauty is meant to be skin deep!