ABSTRACT
Physical attractiveness in Bangladeshi society as elsewhere has several attributes. Skin color is critical to defining a woman's beauty and thus her desirability or ‘saleability’ in the marriage market in South Asia generally. However, this issue tends to be given cursory treatment, and has not been analyzed systematically. In Bangladeshi society, women’s only source of socially approved status is through marriage and motherhood. ‘Dark’-skinned girls, whose marriage prospects are usually much poorer than their ‘light’-skinned counterparts, are subject to much anxiety and anguish in reflecting on their possibilities in adult life. A female child in South Asia begins to realize from infancy that her status is secondary to her male siblings. That a female child is not as welcome as a male child becomes clear at the moment of birth. Marriage is still the only status available for adult women in rural Bangladesh.
