South Indian men dislike with Nimisha Sajayan's skin color and weight. Vijay Sethupathi is of the same color and weight and no one bats an eye.
Colorism in the South Asian region has gender dynamics to it. Dark skin isn't generally favored in Indian communities anywhere around the world. However, dark skinned women are more out of favor than dark-skinned Indian men.
I have three young dark skinned nephews. Their grandmother tells them, "Study, get a good job and earn well. Then you can get beautiful, fair-skinned wives."
Can you guess where this mindset stems from? If you guessed Tamil cinema, you're right. I call this: Brahminical-Dravidian Juxtaposed Gender-Based Colorism. The woman is expected to have Indo-Aryan features, i.e., fair skin, adolescent look, white armpits and genitalia, and a slim body. The man, however has the dominant Dravidian bodily feature: dark skin.
When a woman with Dravidian features plays a tribal woman role, Dravidian men establish their eyes for Indo-Aryan women. But Raghava Lawrence's dark skin = Dravidian feature is OK. In fact, in Jigarthanda Double X, he wants to become the first dark skinned hero in Indian cinema.
Finally, we have actresses like Nimisha Sajayan and Aishwarya Rajesh to represent the average South Indian Dravidian woman on screen, you know, the girl next door. However, it's not well received by South Indian Dravidian men. During a press conference, a journalist told Karthik Subbaraj that though Nimisha isn't "beautiful," she acts well, to which Karthik gave a befitting answer. No one had any problem when the dark skinned Raghava Lawrence created the Muni Cinematic Universe, casting only the fairest, imported actresses with Indo-Aryan features - Vedhika, Tapsee, Lakshmi Rai, Nithya Menen. The same men celebrated when the industry imported a British woman, put on brown contacts on her blue irises, and passed her off as Indian/Anglo-Indian. In comes the package of South Indian women realism in the form of Nimisha Sajayan, and these men come out of the woodworks with disparaging remarks on her Dravidian features.
In Sivaji, when Rajinikanth's dark skin color is pointed out as "not matching to my skin color" by the fair skinned Shriya, Vivek creates a huge scene, spewing a monologue about the pride of dark skin. However, Rajini and Vivek have no qualms making a disgusted mien and rejecting two girls with skin tone like Rajini's. Do you see the gender dynamics?
For added effect, Shankar literally poured bitumen on the twin girls.
Rajinikanth broke the norm of fair-skinned hero despite starting out as a villain and gave confidence to millions of South Indian men with Dravidian features. He was paired with the fairest women on screen and this birthed the idea, "Dark boy and white girl make the best pair."
It's good that South Indian men have a representation on screen. It's totally understandable that they want to feel validated by seeing a demigod who looks like them on screen. Their confidence boost is palpable and they deserve it. But when they see an actress looking like women around them on screen, they don't like it. They still want the likes of Tamannah Bhatia.
Karuppu on South Indian men has become Neruppu thanks to stars like Rajini. It's true that dark skinned South Indian men get mocked for their skin color. But it's not as bad as their female counterparts face. My mom tells her dark skinned grandsons to study well and get big jobs so they can get fair skinned "beautiful wives." Her dark skinned granddaughters however, are given tubes of "Glow & Lovely" so they can transform into white swans and be desirable to "settled but not so suhweet looking Indian men." It's also easier to convince a fair skinned, Indo-Aryan features bearing women to marry a dark skinned South Indian man (especially if he's rich). In Malaysia, rich Malaysian Indian men either date very fair Indian women or Chinese women. This is how this phenomena plays out in real life.
When was the last time you ever saw a South Indian couple where the guy is fair skinned and the girl, dark skinned? Can't remember? Now, reverse the skin tone and gender - fair girl + dark guy. Omnipresent, right? If the girl is dark and the guy, fair and they're having their wedding, South Indian society anywhere in the world reacts like the two ladies in the picture.
I attended a wedding where the bride was dark skinned and the groom, fair skinned. I heard the following comments from the attendees:
1. Is he blind? Such bad taste.
2. The match isn't good.
3. She would've done black magic onto him. There's no way a man that fair would marry a girl like this voluntarily.
4. She must be rich and the guy married her for money.
5. Good looking guys always get the ugly ducklings.
Yeah, these are the same comments Keerthi Pandian and Ashok Selvan got when they got married.
Even in songs in Tamil cinema are dedicated to poetically elevate men's dark skin while systematically perpetuating the idea that only fair skinned women are desirable. Wait for the next blog on this!
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