In the comments below there was a reference to the fact that most Bollywood actresses have a certain look. In particular, the look of someone like Katrina Kaif. The “dark skinned” actresses such as Bipasha Basu aren’t even dark skinned by Indian standards (a major caveat here is that make-up can change skin tone, so Basu might be much swarthier without make-up than with). The Persian or Mediterranean appearance of many Indian actresses is always noted by outsiders. In contrast, someone like British Indian actress Parminder Nagra (who is of Jatt background from what I have heard for what it’s worth) looks indubitably Indian.
After a commenter pointed out that the paucity of Dalits in Bollywood I was curious and resorted to Google. I found basically nothing of note. Why? Are people who are dark skinned or lack sharp features naturally ugly? Some South Asians do believe so (they express the opinion in comments). And that’s fine, people are entitled to their opinions. But I would offer something interesting that I’ve stumbled onto years ago: very poor people are ugly. That sounds harsh, but I came to this conclusion by skimming through Daughter of the Ganges, a memoir by a woman who was adopted by a Spanish family from India. In the memoir she tracked down her birth family in a rural village in Maharashtra. There were some plates. The comparison between between the author and her sister, who were not far apart in age, was shocking. To not put too fine a point on it, the author has a good face for being a female memoirist with cross-cultural appeal (granted, her face and her features are of the normal range for the modal South Asian). Her sister, from what I recall, looked far older than her years and would frankly be classed as repulsive if you saw her walking down the street. Why? The same genes expressed in different environments.
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