The definition of beautiful

I was reading an article this morning that spoke about the newly crowned Miss America and all the debate that was surrounding her winning the crowd as she is Indian-America. The author of this article pointed out how this woman would have never actually won a Miss India beauty contest in India because she wasn't what was deemed to be a beautiful Indian woman, which is apparently someone who is light-skinned first & foremost. The reason this article interested me was because I wasn't aware that being light-skinned was also an issue in other communities. According to this article this occurred in the Indian community as a result of an ancient divide that separated darker skinned Indians and 'created' lighter skinned Indians when Aryans invaded India way back then. You might recall the Aryan race was what Hitler deemed to be the Master Race: blonde hair, blue eyes and obviously white. 

Most black women are aware of the "Yellow-bone" craze that's currently dominating social networks, that is, the obsession with light-skinned women being the definition of beauty. It's just one of those things that has been brainwashed into our brains that a light skin equates to beauty, like undoubtedly. If you are fair, you are pretty, no questions asked. You would perhaps also hear things along the lines of: Oh, she's only pretty because she has a light complexion. Or even worse, some people would even go as far as saying to someone who isn't fair: Oh you're pretty for a dark-skinned girl. <insert shock, horror, gasp> No wonder then that the skin-lightening cream industry is booming...I'm sure, I don't know the statistics but by the amount of black ladies you see with damaged/burned skin or by women you know that became a lighter complexion overnight using lightening creams I would imagine it is.

It seems to me like an awful lot has been invested into making other ethnic groups believe that looking more...white basically is the ideal measure of beauty. The article I spoke about above mentioned how the "most beautiful woman in the world" & and a former Miss India, Aishwarya Rai, looks anything but Indian with "barely-olive skin, brown hair and green eyes." In the black community so many famous black women have also undergone skin-lightening procedures, have weaves (I mean the weave industry has taken black communities by storm), or have undergone facial reconstruction surgeries to make them look less like themselves basically. 

I guess we can blame the media for generally making us believe that "whiteness" is the beauty ideal to aspire to or maybe we can blame colonization for the many years of brainwashing into making us think that "white" is superior, "white" is better, "white" is nearer to perfection than you'll ever be. White is what you need to be to be beautiful. So the lighter your skin, the straighter and longer your hair, the less you look like your ethnic self the more beautiful you are. It's a sad reality and actually a really difficult topic to navigate because there is just so much that is wrong with this. 

I mean, it's not like we have a shortage of BEAUTIFUL dark-skinned women in the world, so what will it take to change this mindset? When will the definition of beautiful incorporate all colours of the spectrum? In this lifetime maybe? Yes?! No?!