“You could have chosen a fair skinned girl as the heroine of your movie, though she has acted well, I felt Malini should have been more glamourous!” Director Dominic Arun had no words to respond to this message he received soon after the release of the first video song from his movie Tharangam that starred Tovino Thomas and debutant actress Santhy Balachandran. Though Dominic ignored that first message, it was upsetting for the entire team when such skin colour-obsessed messages started bombarding their inboxes post release of the movie. Dominic, who wanted to cast a female protagonist whom every girl in Kerala could relate to, found it really funny that Malayalis even now live in the fantasy that the heroine of every film should be ‘beautiful’ and as white as a lily.“According to me, Santhy is a very pretty girl and the perfect choice to play Malini. I never had fair skin as a criterion for my actress. However, two out of every ten messages I received spoke about not choosing a better looking girl (read fair) as the heroine. Shadeism is a deep-rooted prejudice that prevails in our society and it is highly infectious,” Dominic adds.Actress Santhy who was brought up in a family where ‘colour was never an issue’ finds the latest remarks about her skin tone disappointing. “Majority of Keralites are dark-skinned, yet their ideal of beauty is light-skin. Though it has not affected me personally, I am sad how the idea of beauty even in this 21st century revolves around colour and is passed onto the next generation,” she says. Applauding the efforts the Tharangam team took to portray her in her own skin-tone, Santhy urges that the bias can only be blunted by casting more talented dusky women on screen. “Cinema is an influential medium and it can definitely transform the attitudes of the society. Performance should matter at the end not the colour. My friends in my college in UK run out of the house on sunny days to get tanned and here we constantly hear, ‘Veyilukollalle karuthupovum…’. It is time to understand that dusky skin is not a handicap but a body feature,” she says.Being fair is equivalent to being pretty for most of the actresses who sit in front of veteran makeup artist Pattanam Rasheed. “Actresses here demand to reduce their skin tone and make them look fairer. They come to me asking, ‘ithirikoodi veluppikamo?’ Since the technology of makeup has advanced, we have options to get the desired look without seeming ‘painted’. Majority of the actresses are colour biased and insecure about their body tone,” divulges Rasheed. He adds that while a handful of actresses like Shahana Goswami and Bhanupriya wanted him to maintain their skin-tone while applying makeup, actress Silk Smitha always wanted her whole body to be painted to make her look lighter-skinned.“It is ingrained in the minds of Malayalis that brown-black skin is a disadvantage. We are constantly ridiculing ourselves by showing off our insecurities towards being dark skinned and all we are doing is to reinforce the fair-skin obsession in the society. One should get comfortable in one's skin colour and empower the rest. May be the actresses maintaining their tone might bring some change,” Rasheed says.Actor-casting director Dinesh Prabhakar asserts that the colour prejudice prevailing in the industry can only be neutralised by filmmakers breaking the stereotype and casting unconventional looking heroines. “Of late, things are changing. We saw actresses such as Aparna Balamurali and Lijo Mol finding their space in the industry. But I still believe our filmmakers should be a bit more adventurous than trying to be always in the safe zone. It holds good not just for actresses but also for actors. We need directors like Padmarajan and Bharathan. Actor Ashokan when he acted in Padamarajan’s Peruvazhiyambalam had nothing that could be described as ‘handsome’. Actors with calibre without the stereotypical looks eventually move into parallel films as they don’t get opportunities in the mainstream films. So, I strongly feel, filmmakers should give such talented people more opportunities,” Dinesh explains.Echoing his views, Dominic too says cinema can really bring about a change in the minds of people, it being a microcosm of the society. “The fair-skin obsession on screen will be indirectly forcing a lot of people to lighten themselves. It is a dangerous influence on the youth. There are a lot of good performers around and we filter them with the idea of beauty we hold since generations. We should bring out more Rajisha Vijayans, Aparnas and Nimisha Sajayans to silver screen,” he sums up.