That Malayalee girls are more beautiful is a common attitude that is held by many people in the south, especially tamilians. The source of this attitude lies in certain historical cultural complexes held by the Tamil population. The gist of this attitude can be summed up as “white is beautiful” and “black is ugly”. This ingrained prejudice is very so often pointed out and attacked by the Tamil nationalist as part of their narrow narrative dividing south Indians and North indians as races. I will not go into those narratives. That is all too familiar. What I would like to point out is the manifestation of the prejudice in a psychological sense and what the prognosis for it is.
The ingrained prejudice stemming from possibly caste oppression of the past, manifests itself as an inferiority complex in the population. It effects the lower castes and the darker skinned peoples as one would imagine it would as they were the victims of discrimination and were classified as lower class. But it also affects the higher castes and the fair skinned. (The link between the concepts of beauty and that of class are fairly well known. I won't go into too much details; but just to freshen up: people of lower class look upto the higher class for standards of beauty.) One expressed manifestation of this is found in this thread, where people like asin and rekha are used to typify the physical essence of the malayalee. The typical malayalee is dark skinned. If you don't believe me, go outside and count the number of dark skinned and white skinned people you see on the streets. The inferiority complex is more exemplified by the absence of any dark skinned lead actresses than the prominence of punjabi women in South Indian films.
The consequence of this prejudice in tthe population manifests as a peculiar cultural phenomenon. The tamils are the population that cares least about their physical appearance. They dress horribly, don't care for makeup, makes little effort to distinguish their appearance. (One could say that this lack of vanity has its moral merits. But I don't want to go into that. ) This attitude is in contrast to the population of our North east for instance, who care very much about their appearance, they spend money and effort to look fashionable. A population more apt for comparison with the tamil population is that of the Africans. Africans are also dark skinned, but I have heard that they spend hours doing their hair and makeup before going to parties. As vain as it may appear to our outer middle ethos, it distinguishes them in some ways in our inner middle class minds. More importantly it distinguishes them in their own mind. Imagine what people (including dark skinned omes) will think if they saw a dark skinned Indian girl dyes her hair or put corn rows. I have seen many people passing comments on middle class dark girls who try to be “western”. The same people wouldn't mind a white girl doing it. It is because of a conflict of ideas. Dark skin is lower class, they shouldn't try to be western, which is upper class. Put simply, they don't think of themselves as ugly. We do.
Inspite of the supposed political awakening of the tamil nationalist, the inferiority complex is latent in their minds. It would not allow them to imagine as dark skinned heroine. In order to eliminate the prejudice at least in the sense of beauty standards the tamils population needs to be more vain.
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