Miranda Priestly: This… ‘stuff’? Oh… ok. I see, you think this has nothing to do with you. You go to your closet and you select out, oh I don’t know, that lumpy blue sweater, for instance, because you’re trying to tell the world that you take yourself too seriously to care about what you put on your back. But what you don’t know is that that sweater is not just blue, it’s not turquoise, it’s not lapis, it’s actually cerulean. You’re also blithely unaware of the fact that in 2002, Oscar De La Renta did a collection of cerulean gowns. And then I think it was Yves St Laurent, wasn’t it, who showed cerulean military jackets? I think we need a jacket here. And then cerulean quickly showed up in the collections of 8 different designers. Then it filtered down through the department stores and then trickled on down into some tragic casual corner where you, no doubt, fished it out of some clearance bin. However, that blue represents millions of dollars and countless jobs and so it’s sort of comical how you think that you’ve made a choice that exempts you from the fashion industry when, in fact, you’re wearing the sweater that was selected for you by the people in this room. From a pile of stuff.
“You’re wearing the sweater that was selected for you by the people in this room.” Thanks to the people in that room, I lead a life without fashion sense and that is a reason why I constantly see clues that imply the same about the rest of the world.
India has a large number of dark-skinned people and notoriously beats itself for it. Beauty creams like Fair & Lovely, matrimonial ads for fair-skinned women, Tamil movies pairing dark-skinned heroes and (very) fair-skinned heroines are evidences in display. As you go west, women in the middle-east still cover themselves with veils, for whatever reason, preserving their complexion. Women in the western European countries wore veils and hats to cover their faces to avoid a suntan too. I cannot immediately recollect a recent evidence but found one dating back to 1983 in the book that I am currently reading. In the eighth chapter of Elmore Leonard’s LaBrava, Franny Kaufman tells Joe LaBrava the following about Jean Shaw: And her complexion’s great, you can tell she stays out of the sun.
Until recently, fair skin was considered to be more beautiful. At least by those people whose opinion counts, for no reason.
The west, perhaps on getting bored, started trying out other colors. Olive, wheatish, and other darker “exotic” complexions became more desirable. Tanning industry got bigger and bronzing is now in vogue. It would not have bothered me much. But Bollywood is observing Hollywood more carefully than ever before. Hollywood is tanning and bronzing so Bollywood is tanning and bronzing so metropolitan India is tanning and bronzing. Only, Bollywood and most of India is tanned by nature.
I have a similar theory about hair colors. And tattoos. And kohl. And jeans. And jewelry. And… I have narrated so many times to so many friends that they lost the steam.