Frieda Pinto and the Colorism Brigade

The dusky model from Mumbai was first seen on the Hollywood big screen when she was cast alongside Dev Patel in Danny Boyle’s Slumdog Millionaire. Frieda a very talented and conventionally good looking woman seems to have a great line up of movies in her kitty . This year she will be seen in Julian Schanabel’s Miralwhere she portrays a young Palestinian orphan who is caught in between the crossfires of the first Intifada. On multiple online blogs there is an outrage about Frieda’s casting in the motion picture, the main reason being is that she is a dark-skinned Indian who is portraying a “White” Palestinian. There have been Indians/South Asians who have portrayed Palestinian characters in the past most notably Noureen DeWullf who was seen in the West Bank story. The difference between Noureen and Frieda is that the former doesn’t look like a stereotypical “dark Indian” and so her casting wasn’t an issue for the masses. However the people arguing about Frieda’s casting are not purists by any means. While i disagree with Hollywood’s stereotype of people from the Asian continent. This movie is a sensationalized account of the Intifada and the people caught in between it. The dialouge is largely in English and isn’t purist at all.  Coincidentally the woman who Freida is portraying and her share a striking resemblance including the same skin tone. So the people who are against Freida’s casting have an issue with the portrayal of tan Palestinians being brought out into the mainstream. They seem to have been drinking the Kool-Aid of the USian census in which Arab  Americans are classified under the Caucasian tab.  The whole Colorism issue that plagues minority cultures have been in place for some time. Fair skin was equated with aristocracy and beauty for a while and was made worse by the colonial ventures of the 19th centuries. Millions of women of Asian and African descent spend fortunes on skin lightening creams to achieve that much wanted fair complexion. Frieda has bore the brunt of having people accuse her of not being a good looking Indian Woman as opposed to the fair Bollywood actresses when in reality Frieda looks like any regular Indian woman.  Many  people don’t want her to be a representation of India in the western world because she isn’t the idealized Indian beauty and her ventures in Hollywood is a problem for them.