Bollywood Indians vs. Ordinary Indians

December 21, 2011

South Asians have varying degrees of Caucasoid and Australoid ancestry, and actors in Bollywood tend to come from regions and castes with more of the former. They also use plastic surgery and skin bleaching, not just to look younger and more attractive for the screen, but as part of a growing trend in India to appear more Caucasoid. The difference in phenotype between "enhanced" Bollywood stars and ordinary Indians is visible in these facial composites:


Indian male
South Indian male
Bollywood male


Indian female
South Indian female
Bollywood female


Source: The Postnational Monitor – World of Facial Averages

15 comments

louise said...

How sad is it? I have received a reply from an Indian girl, DHONl, on a video about an adv of those Indian bleaching creams. She told me that actually Indians are just tanned because of the weather and that the bleach just helps them not to get too much tanning. How sad is it, not accepting what you really are?
Here is her reply to Orlay White Beauty Cream:
"I'm Indian . And I have used these creams before (lol)
But we dont use it too whiten our skin (like michael jackson). These creams help remove TAN.
In India its toooo hot (50 degree celcius) and ur skin darkens,...
These creams make ur skin dry and fair
And they don't have any side effects (these creams are not very powerful so even a 10 year old can use it)"
I do think that this is due to ignorance and a huge lack of education.

louise said...

The Arabs use it too. I've live one year in London, and I have seen loads of Muslim girls with such pale faces that it seemed they had never met the day light! Do believe me: they scare the hell out of you. Obviously they also wear blue and green lenses. How sad are they?
It would be interesting to see Arabs DNA. They claim of still being Mediterranean but it appears they've mixed with SubSahara Africans, see Ruby Heyek for instance. She's North African but she looks biracial. Obviously Arabs are not completely Caucasoid anymore.

Anonymous said...

There seem to be a lot of Indian, Japanese, Korean, Chinese actors vs non-actors comparisons around. You should make an attempt with West Eurasian populations.

Anonymous said...

Interesting. The composite Bollywood female closely resembles the composite of the FHM top 16 world's sexiest women of 2006:

http://dienekes.blogspot.com/2006/03/fhm-top-16-composite-woman.html

In fact, having looked at her moments ago (did a websearch for facial composites, LOL), I for a moment thought that the "composite Bollywood female" was the same picture, misposted.

Anonymous said...

"There seem to be a lot of Indian, Japanese, Korean, Chinese actors vs non-actors comparisons around. You should make an attempt with West Eurasian populations. "

You can't deny that there's too much Eurocentric bias for a study like this to happen. We acknowledge that white Europeans have incredibly diverse distributions of facial features despite some similarities according to region, but we lump together people of other races quite specifically to different regions/castes.

Anonymous said...

"She's North African but she looks biracial. Obviously Arabs are not completely Caucasoid anymore."

- Not all North Africans are the same or brown-skinned Arabs, ignorant twat.

Anonymous said...

Neither must all Musilims be Arabs in order to be Muslims *sigh at ignorance and stereotypes*

Anonymous said...

By the way, I checked that Egyptian "Ruby Heyek" chick and she isn't even that pale, neither does she look biracial, she looks like the Arabs of the Arabian Penisula. In Morocco, Algeria or Tunisia, where fair-skinned is commun, she would be considered "tanned".

Anonymous said...

So all Indians are dark and the ones that are fair and handsome are exceptional bollywood types? PLEASE! You make me laugh. I come from the poorest state in India, Bihar, and my family are rajputs of the middle class variety. My sister is paler than any persian at her school, and looks more beautiful than all the middle eastern girls at her school. She is mistaken for white. Never Indian. My mother recently went to the passport office and when she asked the white officer what to put down for ethnicity, he said "White, obviously!" I am mistaken for Greek, Persian and Arab, even Latino. Never Indian. But I am still Indian. I am hit on by White women, Persian women, Asian women, Black women, you name it. Really hot ones too. And I am JUST an average north indian from a middle class family. I know Indian guys over 6'2', who look better than that gay looking Brad Pitt who CLEAN up with women of ANY ethnicity. If I tried, I could do the same. So keep hating on Indians. Believe what you want to believe. Losers.

Anonymous said...

Eh Indians come in a variety of shades. This is too much lumping and generalization.

Anonymous said...

Subconscious hangover from colonial times?

Anonymous said...

Look at bollywood actress without make up . you will agree that they are no different from rest of indians

Anonymous said...

Interesting that there is no morph for actual regions of South Asia considering the phenotypical and genetics diversity. Just South and an "all Indian" morph. No morph for the Northwest, Northeast, East, West, etc. There isn't even a North Indian morph. Bollywood is overrepresented by Northwest South Asians and some Muslims with foreign ancestry so obviously if there was a morph for Northwest Indians/Pakistanis it would look much closer to the Bollywood morph than the South Indian and generic Indian morph. The ignorance on this blog is astounding.

Varg said...

Sorry,the Indians of India/Bharat and moreover Indians of USA are very very old Kypchak Turks or Proto-Turks

koala said...

The general sentiments of this post are correct, but while it is true only a small percentage of Indians are as light skinned out of the entire population, that doesn't mean those light skinned Indians are small in numbers when you take in the fact that India is a country of over 1 billion people. Also very few Bollywood actors and actresses have had surgery or lightened their skin in real life, most of them are just from that small percent that are lighter skinned. Also there are many Bollywood stars are actually partially only half Indian. Unfortunately the Bollywood industry is mainly controlled by Indians from the North West regions who tend to be the most Caucasoid looking of all Indians. Even regionally, lighter skinned Indians from other regions (who may not look as Caucasoid by facial features) but have equally light skin, have some control of the industry.
Also to only point out Bollywood is a gross misrepresentation, so many other industries have preferences for light skinned Indian. Also there are many stars that have very little Caucasoid admixture and features but do simply lighter skin with typical Indian faces.
That all being said, India is such a big country if you look at India by region, like they way people do Europeans, you will notice an obvious difference in facial features and sometimes skin tones of different ethnic groups. Different Indian ethnic groups are not anymore of a homogeneous group of people then Europe or East Asia. That being said majority of populations of the regions in India are often interchangeable with bordering regions, not all the time like e.g Assami Indians, but most of the time it is true but that is the same for every population in the world.