The large number of my clients over the years who have asked me to make them fairer than their natural skin tone was not something that I was prepared for. The reasons are the same (my mother-in-law likes fair girls/my husband is fair/I accidentally got a tan) but the language has started to change. Ten years ago, a girl would sit in my make-up chair and plainly say, “Bina, could you make me a little fairer, please.” But now there is a subtle code. “Bina, I don’t like a tanned look.” So, at least, there is the beginning in some but not all cases, of a little embarrassment about this request. The number of blue lenses I see has, mercifully, gone down as well.

But what is at the root of this desire to be ‘gora’? I often break down the will of my white-skin-requesting clients through discussion. It goes something like this:

“Bina, could you make me fair?”
“But why, buddy? You have such a nice complexion.”
“But my in-laws…”
“Your in-laws said what? ‘Hey sweets, please cover up what you are because we don’t care for it!’”
“Ha ha, no. But it looks nice.”
“Why? Why does it look nice? You look pretty nice to me as you are!”
“I am not sure if it will suit me if I don’t.”
“What won’t suit you? YOUR SKIN???”

We go on to discuss whether it is a postcolonial complex, a residual desire to resemble our fair overlords (be they the conquering Persians, Greeks, Central Asians, Mughals,Turks or the British), or a desire that has simply crept in and become the baseline standard of beauty that we no longer even question. Some speculate that this has more to do with status. Some higher castes in India were, incidentally, fairer skinned. Also your field worker, toiling in the sun, has a tan … the lady of the house has lily-white skin. So the same motivation that breeds a desire for fair skin is behind the custom of crippling foot binding. A sobering thought.

Asians all over the continent and its islands revere fairness (Far Eastern women often wear gloves and sunshades which repel the sun’s ultraviolet rays and are obsessive about sunblock and whitening facials. The Asian American skin-whitening market is worth 250 million dollars a year in the US). Japanese men, however, are considered more desirable if they have tanned skin, as sporty men are the ideal. Ladies are to stay delicately beneath their parasols, in order to remain Bihaku (beautiful white), much like the geisha. The beauty of a geisha is judged by the skin of her neck, which is paint-free … the whiter it is, the more beautiful she is considered. So now, we have sexism creeping into the mix.

Other more global issues are also of interest. Famous African American faces are usually Caucasian-looking, albeit with darker skin. They are very often also half-white. From Barack Obama to Halle Berry, from Beyonce to Iman, from Colin Powell to Tyra Banks, from Alicia Keys to Vanessa Williams, the ideals of coloured beauty appear to be of indeterminate ethnicity. L’oreal was at the centre of a scandal recently; the company was accused of digitally lightening Beyonce’s skin in an ad that the New York Post called “shocking”. In the same article, the Post referenced the not-so-recent Time scandal, where O J Simpson’s skin was darkened in his mug shot by the magazine, presumably to make him look more menacing.

“So which is it? Which reason makes you want to be fairer on your wedding day? A postcolonial hang up? Racism? Sexism? Classism? Bigotry?” I asked this question of a client some time ago. Her response made me smile. “I guess I never thought about it. You are right, let’s stick to my own colour … Just not too tanned, okay?”

Bina Khan is a make-up artist, photographer, skin technician and writer. She owns a salon and photography studio in Karachi, writes for Newsline and The Express Tribune and has a widely-read blog.