Despite being called out by celebs like Amna Ilyas and Mansha Pasha, Pakistan’s ‘gora complex’ never dies. Now actress Ghana Ali is taking a shot at the problematic beauty standard.
Over time, with people shirking the use of whitening creams, they still use photo filters to achieve the same result. The Saya e Dewar Bhi Nahi actress thinks it’s high time Pakistanis reduce their obsession with whitening skin with the help of filters.
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This isn’t the first time celebs have gone after the ‘gora complex’. Dark-skinned celebs like Aamina Sheikh, Sanam Saeed, Amna Ilyas, Zara Abid, etc have worked for years to make a place for ‘actually brown’ women in mainstream entertainment.
Amna Ilyas is very vocal about colorism in the entertainment industy. She has shared the type of comments she faced growing up and throughout her career.
“The top five actresses (in the biz) are light-skinned, and those that weren’t have made their skin lighter to be part of the race,” she said.
Subtle Conditioning
While people are more vocal about the issue in general, they often give in to the beauty standards society keeps propogating. When that’s all mainstream media pushes at us it’s hard to love yourself.
Just recently people called out how there’s a lack of dark-skinned actors in the biz. And how an upcoming TV serial had Ahmed Ali Akbar use blackface in order to play the role of a dark-skinned man.
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Meanwhile, actual dark-skinned actors like Salahuddin Tunio and Gohar Rasheed are typecast as antagonists. With the exception of Fahad Mustafa, who’s been a moviestar for years now, and Mohib Mirza that recently made a comeback to television, how many actors on Tv actually look like the average brown guy?
What may seem harmless subtlely conditions us to associate certain things with a certain skin color. It’s high time mainstream film and television actually start catering to their audience.
