What the whitewashing of wax Beyonce should teach us all

Like so many young girls in the West who grew up on Disney movies, teen magazines and TV shows with flawless heroines, I wanted to be just like the women I saw in the media.

The standards they promoted seeped into my consciousness to the point where I knew a) that it was important to be beautiful, and b) beauty was predominantly white, or as close to it as you could get.

It's why - and I wince to write this - I always thought that Beyonce was the best member of Destiny's Child because she was the fairest. As a young Indian girl, I desperately wanted to be paler, because that meant being prettier.

The sad truth is: non-white girls, growing up in predominantly white countries, struggle. These feelings came rushing back when I read about the new Beyonce figurine at Madame Tussauds in New York. When images of the waxwork were released, there was widespread confusion.

It did not look like Beyonce. It looked like a blonde, white woman. Simply, the museum had whitewashed Beyonce.

After a lot of anger on social media, they took the statue away and "adjusted the styling and lighting of her figure" to make her look more realistic - for which read, darker.

In recent years, many companies and publishers have made conscious efforts to move away from the view that lighter skin is a desirable quality.

Lupita Nyong'o was named People's Most Beautiful Woman in 2014, and shortly after, Lancome made her the first black woman to advertise the beauty brand.

But more often than not, the black and minority ethnic women we recognise as "beautiful" still fit Western standards - from light-skinned black women like Beyonce to Asian women with highlighted hair, and green-eyed Indian women such as Aishwarya Rai. It is really no wonder that many women of colour, like me, grow up wishing our own skin was whiter.

Last year, Lil' Kim, the hugely successful - and beautiful - rapper came under fire for seeming to post whitewashed images of herself on Instagram. Many were shocked that she would cave to pressure to appear whiter, and send out such a negative message. She was criticised for wanting to look like "Barbie".

But to me it made sense. In the past she has said that, when it came to her love life, "being a regular black girl wasn't good enough" and "All my life men have told me I wasn't pretty enough - even the men I was dating."

Just because Lil' Kim is famous doesn't mean she is immune to the fact that society still sees fairer skin as prettier than dark.

In an ideal world, it shouldn't matter. There is so much more that women can, should and do aspire to than their appearance.

But it is near-impossible to grow up as a woman in the West without caring about the way you look; be it because of peers, the media or social platforms.

The answer to helping the next generation of girls avoid insecurity lies not in telling them not to care, but cultural change that accepts beauty in all its colours.

A new version of Aladdin is currently being made and the character of Princess Jasmine has been cast as the half-Indian and half-white Naomi Scott. No doubt she is deserving of the role on many counts - being lighter skinned is not something she should be shamed for.

But this would have been the perfect opportunity for Disney to choose a darker-skinned actress and help millions of women around the world identify with a woman on screen - and finally feel pretty enough. - The Telegraph, London