May 1, 2020 12:51 AM
(This post was last modified: May 1, 2020 06:05 AM by C C.)
https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-52487123
INTRO: A viral TikTok trend in India has been accused of promoting colourism. It involves users digitally darkening their skin colour and looking sad - before revealing their natural, lighter skin tone at the end and smiling.
Colourism is prejudice against people who have a darker skin tone or the preferential treatment of those who are of the same race but lighter-skinned. A huge backlash has prompted deletions and calls for TikTok to take the videos down.
The trend, which began earlier this week, has reignited a huge debate on colourism in India and beyond. It sees users lip-sync to a song from a Tamil film called 3, with lyrics about a "white skin girl" with a "black heart", and gesture to their artificial skin tone. The music has been used more than 21,000 times, with the videos receiving millions of views.
Radhika Parameswaran, a professor at Indiana University and commentator on colourism, says this trend is disconnected from the original context. In the film, a beautiful light-skinned woman who has a "black heart" is impervious to the hero's love. The song "did not explicitly refer to dark skin, but nevertheless Kolaveri Di's catchy tunes and lyrics become creative fodder for these youths to stage their playful and dramatic performances of skin colour mutating from dark to light," she said... (MORE)
Why is India so obsessed with fair skin?
https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/9BQc2guo-Lg
INTRO: A viral TikTok trend in India has been accused of promoting colourism. It involves users digitally darkening their skin colour and looking sad - before revealing their natural, lighter skin tone at the end and smiling.
Colourism is prejudice against people who have a darker skin tone or the preferential treatment of those who are of the same race but lighter-skinned. A huge backlash has prompted deletions and calls for TikTok to take the videos down.
The trend, which began earlier this week, has reignited a huge debate on colourism in India and beyond. It sees users lip-sync to a song from a Tamil film called 3, with lyrics about a "white skin girl" with a "black heart", and gesture to their artificial skin tone. The music has been used more than 21,000 times, with the videos receiving millions of views.
Radhika Parameswaran, a professor at Indiana University and commentator on colourism, says this trend is disconnected from the original context. In the film, a beautiful light-skinned woman who has a "black heart" is impervious to the hero's love. The song "did not explicitly refer to dark skin, but nevertheless Kolaveri Di's catchy tunes and lyrics become creative fodder for these youths to stage their playful and dramatic performances of skin colour mutating from dark to light," she said... (MORE)
Why is India so obsessed with fair skin?