印度也“以白为美”？选美小姐全体黑发白肤引争议

Photograph of Miss India finalists（决赛选手）stirs（引发）debate over country's obsession（迷恋） with fair skin

00:06——00:28

what began as an innocent collage（拼贴照）of this year's Miss India finalists has evolved into a heated social media debate about India's obsession with fair skin.

The image, published in of India newspaper, had 30 head-shots of glossy-haired（秀发如云的）finalists who all appeared to share the same fair skin tone（肤色）.

00:28——00:58

In a country with 1.3 billion people, hundreds of languages and myriad（无数的）ethnic groups（种族）, Twitter users suggested that beauty pageant organizers were only choosing contestants（参赛者）that perpetuate（持续）Eurocentric（以欧洲为中心的） beauty ideals（美女标准）.

"They all have the same hair, and the SAME SKIN COLOUR, and I'm going to hazard（引发大胆猜测） a guess that their heights and vital stats will also be similar," another Twitter user Prasanna Ratanjankar wrote.

00:58——01:23

While the contestants' skin tone looks particularly light and appearance especially uniform in the collage that caused a stir online, other photographs and videos of the contestants reveal（展示） them to be not as fair-skinned as of India's image. of India and Femina, the organization that hosts the pageant, have the same parent company -- Bennett, Coleman & Co.

01:23——02:06

The controversy（争论） around of India's photograph, however, highlighted a sensitive issue in India, where Miss India is a huge cultural event.

The competition helped to launch the careers of actress Priyanka Chopra and Bollywood icon Aishwarya Rai, and has become a beacon（灯塔，指引）of national pride when winners go on to bring home international titles, such as Miss World.

The winner of Miss India titles are typically "groomed（培训） for the global beauty stage," said Radhika Parameswaran, a professor at Indiana University's Media School. "There is a perception（看法） they have to emulate（仿效）Western beauty standards to win."

02:06——02:40

The organizers of Miss India declined to comment.

The fact that India has won the Miss World contest six times could have convinced pageant organizers to stick to a type, says Kavitha Emmanuel, founder of the Indian NGO Women of Worth, which campaigns for gender equality and against the bias（偏爱） toward lighter skin.

The infatuation（迷恋） with fairness now goes much deeper than pageants. "It is a toxic（有害的） belief that has become part of our culture," Emmanuel explained.

02:40——end

Parameswaran is currently researching the backlash against colorism, a term that means "a form of skin color stratification（分层） and skin color discrimination（歧视） that assigns lighter-skinned individuals and particularly women greater worth and value." It's an issue, she said, that is very much alive in India.

"Colorism and racism are Siamese twins（连体婴） and cannot be separated," she added.

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