After years of holding onto the brand image of ‘Fair & Lovely’, Hindustan Unilever (HUL) recently decided to drop the word “fair” and other related words that promise skin-lightening. Welcoming the move, Bollywood actor Bipasha Basu on Friday penned a powerful note recounting her journey as a dusky model turned actor in India.
Recalling how she was made to realise her skin colour at a young age, Bipasha wrote on social media, “From the time I was growing up I heard this always, ‘Bonnie is darker than Soni. She is a little dusky na?’ Even though my mother is a dusky beauty and I look a lot like her.I never knew why that would be a discussion by distant relatives when I was a kid.”
Speaking about how her skin colour became her adjective, Bipasha shared, “Soon at 15-16, I started modelling and then I won the supermodel contest. All newspapers read: Dusky girl from Kolkata is the winner. I wondered again, why dusky is my first adjective? Then I went to New York and Paris to work as a model and I realized my skin colour was exotic there. I got more work and attention because of it. Another discovery of mine. Once I came back into India, film offers started and finally I did my first film. I suddenly was accepted and loved. But the adjective stayed, which I started liking and loving by then. Dusky girl wows the audiences in her debut film. In most of my articles for all the work I did, my duskiness seemed to be the main discussion. It attributed to my sex appeal apparently. And sexy in Bollywood started getting accepted widely. I never really understood this.”
Bipasha recounts that there was a strong perception in Bollywood on how an actress should look and behave like. She was “different” and it got pointed out. However, she did not let her skin colour define her. “Many skin care endorsements with loads of money were offered to me in the last 18 years (some were very tempting) but I stuck to my principle always,” she added.
Urging everyone to stop selling the dream that only fair is beautiful, Bipasha writes: “All this needs to stop. This wrong dream that we are selling… that only fair is lovely and beautiful when the majority of the country is brown skinned. It’s a deep-rooted stigma. It’s a mammoth step from the brand and other brands should follow in the same footsteps soon.”
On the professional front, Bipasha was last seen in 2015 horror film Alone, in which she shared the screen space with Karan Singh Grover. Later, she hosted the first season of &Tv’s show Darr Sabko Lagta Hai.