Ads for Princesses

Advertising is fascinating all over India, featuring white skinned families with blue eyed babies as the norm. You will drive through poor rural villages and see massive billboards portraying Indians far more light skinned than is usual in the south, wearing the most sumptuous silk brocades and absolutely dripping with finely wrought gold jewelry. No doubt the billboards are placed to advertise stores in larger cities up ahead for wealthy travellers but I wonder what the locals make of it.

Poor rural southern India may not be dripping with gold but they are much better off than poor rural northern India. Homes look sturdier, freshly painted and better kept, farm animals look healthier and the fields are lush and fertile. We have passed rice paddies, potato fields, sugar cane fields, cotton fields, corn fields, wheat fields, coconut farms, banana farms and, joy of joys, a rose farm.

This is the first place in India where I have seen a lot of weight loss ads. Their movie posters still feature portly fellas with moustaches as the romantic heroes and historically Bollywood actresses have been considered beautiful even when they have a good heft to them. The lack of belief that someone must be slim to be attractive is something I have enjoyed about India. Maybe the south, with a better education and access to western information, are picking up on our less healthy obsessions.

Mysore, aka Mysuru, is a city of beautiful palaces and faded glory from the time of the Maharajahs. We stayed in an ex-palace, ate lunch in the fancy ballroom of another ex-palace and watched yet another exquisite palace lit up with over 100,000 lights for forty minutes, costing 70,000 rupees per show. The ex-palace, ex-Bollywood set where I stayed is now an eco-hotel using solar power, hiring local people and giving proceeds to charities. They also had an excellent bakery. It made me feel good about being posh and helping at the same time.

Being surrounded by palaces, I was feeling a bit like a princess but got that bubble burst while shopping for Mysore's two most famous items - silk and sandalwood. I was in a highly recommended government emporium looking at silk kurtas when a gentleman approached me.
"Madam, we have clothes in your size over here."
"And what size would that be?"
"3XL or 4XL"
Fuck you.

My size medium Canadian clothes may be vanity sized along the fat Canadian spectrum but I am maximum a large in FabIndia sizes so his "assistance" really pissed me off. Of course, since size is not such a big deal here, what he said would not have felt as insulting to an Indian woman and he probably thought he was just being helpful.

Then I went to look at sandalwood. The perfume oil they had was cheap and wimpy but, the man had a recommendation for me.
"Madam, you need Sandal Mask."
"Oh, what does Sandal Mask do?"
"Sandal Mask will whiten your skin for you."
"There is nothing wrong with dark skin, you racist bastard. And don't buy into what you see on the billboards." (May not be exactly as stated but is exactly as thought.)

Not exactly a shopping experience to make one feel like a princess. At least my roommate, Cz, tells me I'm a princess. Mainly because I need the AC turned off and a heavy duvet to get to sleep, and I like to sleep in palaces.