Why do all the "pretty" indian women have to be light skinned with non brown eyes? I swear to god I had to look twice at some of the pictures posted, because they looked so much like white women...bleh...

And although she is attractive/nice looking, I fail to see why Aishwarya Ray is the epitome of Indian beauty. My indian friend will argue to the death that AR is the most beautiful indian woman, but I beg to differ.

And whoever it was that was looking for a beautiful indian woman {in the beginning of the post}, move your arse from in front of the computer screen, step outside and look.

Pictures are deceiving when it comes to skin color. Just b/c you look light in certain pics doesn't mean that you are in real life. BTW, there were pretty brown-skinned girls posted in this thread. Look at Sheetal Mallar, who is on the previous page.


It's not necessarily true that "all" pretty Indian girls are light-skinned. Indian actress Rekha is a perfect example of a brown-skinned actress that is viewed as one of the most drop-dead stunning Indian women. Even in her older age, she is viewed as more beautiful than some of the younger, light-skinned actresses with colored contacts.





She's on the left







You're not alone, but Aishwarya Rai's beauty doesn't only have to do with her light skin, hair and eyes. Look closely at her facial structure and eye shape. Big eyes, roundish cheeks/face, small button nose, and pouty lips also define the epitome of Indian beauty.

If you're light-skinned and have light eyes, but you have beady eyes and a large hooked nose, you probably won't be viewed as that attractive. People will just say that your fair skin and light eyes are the only good features that you have.

If you're a brown-skinned girl with big pretty eyes and a finely shaped nose, a lot of people will look past your skin color and still think of you as pretty, because you have the features of a "classical Indian beauty."


Even though Rekha is not fair-skinned, her face was just too pretty for India not to like her!


So, it is possible to be a brownie and have Indians be in awe of what you look like.

well said expressYourself, I dont understand why people come to these threads to make baseless assumptions without looking at all the pictures posted.
Also, i like fair skinned girls AND i happen to be one of the few people posting pictures in this thread.

Not necessarily. Below are a few pictures of Nandita Das, one of the most talented and well-known Indian actresses not just among Indian movie-goers but the whole international film community. I know beauty is a very subjective thing, but I would personally consider Nandita Das as being 'very good looking'. The reason is that she is brown complexioned with dark eyes, and looks like your ordinary Indian girl from next door. But her beauty is undeniably and truly captivating and mesmerising.

Another pretty brown looking indian gal..
Trisha krishnan..

Another one Sonali kulkarni..



Annie thomas:

Another one... rak$hita..



rhea pillai;



I hope all the brown lovers are happy...

The thing u must notice is the features.. Indian feautures are not blunt most of the time.. fair or dark the features of indian people are sharp most of the time.. Most women posted here don't look white maybe ash or preity. majority look brown with good features.

maheswari ..

shriya:




Aparna:



meera jasmine:



if u see their features are typically indian...

Can't get more brown than this:

Shilpha reddy...

sri murali krupa

Meghna reddy

Gauri pradhan Tv actress;





aryanish patel;

malaikha arora:

sneha...

Here's a few more brown Indian beauties:

Natassha:





Amrita Rao:





Rani Mukherjee:





Bipasha Basu:

I am aware that selected features make for a prettier face, however whilst looking at the pictures in earlier threads many of the models/actresses/celebs seemed to have light skin.

The purpose of my thread wasn't to downgrade these people, but to raise the issue of why amongst most cultures and races light skin "ups the rank" of people so to speak.

ndnboi my last post might have been a baseless assumption, but disregarding the pictures posted in this thread, just by speaking to some of my indian girl friends and looking at the magazines they read - it led me to see what ranks highly in terms of beauty with them. That was my main argument. I probably should have phrased it as "why is light skin seen as such a thing of beauty?"

In future I won't make such sweeping statements - apologies to those who were sensitive to what I said.

Thank you to Nath who posted a picture of:



I'm not really familiar with this actress, but it's nice to see pictures of women normally (i.e little make up, captured randomly, untainted by filters of a camera lense). Yes, beauty is subjective and natural beauty i.e people who look beautiful at any given second [without touchups] definately holds high in terms of beauty with me. I tend to see more beauty whilst I'm out than in the pages of a magazine.

Hi Zee(what nationality are u from)??? U said that some looked white well the thing is there are plently of women in india who would look white... Doesn'nt mean that they cannot be represented in media... it is not just indian media take mexico for example their media shows white looking people.. On reaching there i was shocked to see that there weren't many white skinned people in fact their popluation is only 7 % same was the case with peru,bolivia,puerto rico gautemala,nicaragua etc ... Now ricky martin is a blonde he isn't representative of the puerto rican people... This happens everywhere. Why??? Maybe colonial hangover or the fact that hollywood was the first film industry in the world and promoted the white look and rest of the world tried to ape..

I know that many indians value light skin But it is not that bad. In fact most of our actress are more brownish and almost all of our ramp models are almost brinze skinned. take for exmple ash and sushmita both competed and sush was selected first place and ash second ... if we really looked for white skin that much then ash would have had to be first... even diana hayden was pretty dark and rani jeyraj was even darker and they were all selected from scores of light skinned women..


Please let's just enjoy the pics instead of deabting this.. start another thread for it...

out of all the pics of "brown" skinned women in this thread, the only one that actually seems darker skinned is Garima Parnami (p. 14)...otherwise, none of the other women really are dark/brown. they're just darker than the really really light skinned women. but that's just my opinion, i'm sure most ppl on this forum would disagree.

The reason why some of the brown girls posted here don't look "darker" is because of the lighting in the pictures. If you saw them on TV or in films, you would certainly think they were darker.

i agree.....althou some of the 'brown' ones on this thread had more typically indian feautures too compared to some of the lighter ones
they r very pretty

esp this one


but again, could be lighting cos she doesnt look all that dark
im wondering....r there any dravidian types of actress in bollywood?

What Indian ethnicity are you? What's considered dark might vary between Indian groups. All of the women would be considered "brown" to North Indian standards, and especially "dark" to Punjabis and Kashmiris. But to a pitch-dark Tamil, these girls wouldn't be considered darker-toned.










That was my point exactly! People seem to forget that when looking at pictures of any brown-skinned person.

And, it's not just pictures of celebrities. It happens with everyday cameras that are used on everyday people. It's pretty common to come out looking a lot lighter than you in photos.

Yes, it's the lighting and the camera flash reflecting off of your face. If you looked at some of my pictures, you also wouldn't be able to tell that I was brown-skinned in real life. Never trust pictures.



I can't think of any. There are definitely brown/dark actresses in Bollywood, but I don't think their facial features would be considered "Dravidian."

thats strange cos i always thought the majority of the indian population r dravidians (i could be wrong so sorry if im mistaken ) but havnet seen any indian celebs that have that resemble (or are) dravidian at all......

the majority indians i met r of the dravidian stock thats y......

bubbles...Actually most of women i have posted are dravidian and they are not in bollywood. india has many film industries.... The one u said is pretty is a telugu actress...

double post

This one is a tamil model.. Ashruta jayaram...

What's your definition of a Dravidian?

If you're talking about somebody who speaks a Dravidian language, then yes. There are Dravidian actresses. Even Aishwarya Rai would be considered Dravidian by that standard.



If your definition of a dravidian is this:




Then nobody in Bollywood looks like that.


As far as most Indians being Dravidians, I don't consider most of them to be purely of Dravidian stock. The average Indian doesn't look like the men that I posted above. The average Indian is brown/dark-skinned, but has Caucasoid facial features.

Do you know what ethnicity the Indians that you meet are, who are of "Dravidian" stock?

Bubbles20, where do you live? What kind of indians do you live near?

I've written this before and since everyone who comes to IndiaTalk always asks, maybe this should be made a sticky.

Bollywood, is the hindi film industry. It happens to be the biggest film industry in the country so people expect it to be representative of the whole country but there is also kollywood(tamil), the bengali film industry, tollywood(telugu) and local industries everywhere else.
If you watch bollywood movies you'll notice that the lead characters are often punjabi or some other type of north indian. You'll see sikh characters, characters with typical north indian surnames and people living in shimla, dehradun or some other mountain town in the north.
A lot of the producers and directors are north indian such as the chopras, kapoors, ghais, johars etc. A lot of the people they bring into the industry are relatives or people of the same ethnic background(kapoor sisters, hrithik roshan, salman khan etc.) Now that the industry has become more open to outsiders and let modeling people in, their is an influx of more non-north indian people such as Koena Mitra, Bipasha Basu etc.
If any conclusion is to be drawn from this is that India likes dark skin(hence the reason all the country's top models are dark skinned and picked for their beauty) and that fairskinned people need family to get in the industry. This is supported by the fact that the country's top star Shahrukh Khan is dark skinned(by north indian standards cuz remember bollywood is esentially a north indian industry) AND he got into the industry without any relatives.

His definition of "Dravidian" might not merely mean someone that is South Indian. Maybe he's talking about the Australoid/Africoid look of some Indians?



Even though she may speak a Dravidian language, her face is totally Caucasoid looking. An Anthropologist would consider her to be a brown-skinned Indo-Aryan, not a Dravidian.




Some site was saying that India is mostly of Indo-Aryan stock, but you always can't trust anything on the net.

That actress is a Dravidan, and so is Aishwarya Rai... although light skin isn't common among Dravidans.

"Bollywood" is another name for the Hindi film industry. Dravidans also have their own Tamil, Telegu and Malayalam film industries in South India, while Northern India has the Gujurati, Punjabi, Bengali and Assamese film industries. Bollywood is located in Central India but most of its actors and actresses are from the north.


Dravidans aren't the majority, they make up 25% of India's population, while Indo-Aryans make up 70% of India.

I thought central India was technically a part of the North.

I never heard anybody say that "I'm central Indian," lol.

You either say you're North Indian or South Indian.

all south indians are not dravidian, and all north indians are not aryan...and most of the indian population is a mix of the two. like someone else said, it's not skin tone that determines whether or not someone is aryan or dravidian, but it's the facial features.

there r plenty of south indian actors and actresses in bollywood, and there always have been...just like there r a good number of north indian actors and actresses in south indian movies, but i think they use this as a way to break into bollywood.

as for bollywood and the fair skin issue, most actors and actresses have traditionally been fairer skinned, and only recently have there been darker skinned, or as indians like to say, "dusky" skinned ppl in bollywood. it is true, a lot of the darker skinned actresses have been models, but i think this is a good thing...bollywood, although it seems to be catered towards the hindi speaking population, should be representative of all india, not just a small portion of fair skinned ppl.

also, bollywood is huge all over india, not just in north india. they even dub hindi films in different indian languages and play them in areas where hindi is not spoken or understood.

i think it depends on who u ask...some ppl from mumbai call themselves north indian, while others call themselves south indian. it's kind of hard to say, since it's literally in the center of india.

Are you sure Aishwarya Rai is Dravidian?
That girl too? They look alot more Indo-Aryan to me...

Dravidian is also a lingustic term.
I don't think he meant it in a racial sense.

Aishwarya Rai and that girl speak Dravidian languages, so they are considered Dravidians.





I wonder if the ones who do say that they're South Indian might actually be South Indian migrants to Bombay?


It's sometimes a misconception to think that where you live has to do with what you are. You could be a Punjabi born and raised in UP, but you're still a Punjabi and not ethnically UPite.

i'm not sure, but i think most indians consider themselves to be north or south indian depending on their family background and where their family comes from...i dont really think that where ur born determines what u are either...i have a friend who's malyalee, but was born in rajasthan, but still calls herself a malayalee, because that's what her family is and what they speak.

but dont u think it's hard to classify someone as truly dravidian or aryan based solely on the language they speak? i've seen and met plenty of north indians that have typical dravidian features, and many south indians that have typical aryan features. i always thought that the classification of either dravidian or aryan was based on facial features and not on language. ppl must have migrated over time but probably retained their predominantly dravidian or aryan blood by marrying within their community or caste, hence the confusion of language vs. looks. i guess it's safe to say that the majority of the indian population is a mix of the two.

Indo-Aryan and Dravidian are linguistic terms and don't define "race". Any native speaker of an Indo-Aryan language is an Aryan, and any native speaker of a Dravidian language is a Dravidian. There are physical differences but you shouldn't rely on them to judge a person's ethnicity.

Its similar to how Turks and Jews define their ethnicity by language rather than "race", which is obvious from the fact that Western Turks and Eastern Turks look vastly different. Many other ethnic groups are also defined by language.

I personally don't believe in all that Aryan/Dravidian racial BS. So, I would just prefer to use it as linguistic terms.

What's funny is that a lot of light-skinned Indians can have blunt features, and a lot of dark-skinned Indians can have fine features. And. what about "Aryan" looking Indians with Dravidian-looking siblings and parents (yes, it's possible) ?

How you do you classify people like that? It's just too complicated, so I also would think that everyone's in between.....




Yeah, that's what I meant. You know how aunties and uncles always ask you "What part of India are you from?" LOL, they should just ask "What's your ethnicity?" instead. The first question probably won't tell you much.

Rockhart,
Ever thought of investing in some English Lessons?

this is ASIN a malyalee actress and i find her to be very pretty.

rimi sen bollywood actress of bengali origin...

Amna sharif indian tv actress.

trisha krishnan(tamil actress)

gayathri joshi(marathi origin) swades actress.

rimi sen

shes beautiful! i like her look better than aish too, her features r less harsh (more soft)



this one is gorgeous too!

but the rest of the girls on this page range from not pretty at all to so-so......

Amna Sharif is beautiful!

Like they say, the prettiest Indian girls aren't even on T.V./movies.

i think thats the same for every ethnicity then