Information Minister Zainuddin Maidin's comments regarding the many Eurasian faces in the entertainment and advertisement industry must not be shot down without proper examination of the underlying concept of beauty and its relationship to fairness.

It is easy to consider the comments as complete farce, by saying 'What is a Malaysian face?' or 'Eurasians didn't choose to look that way'. However, the question we must also ask is 'Why is it that Eurasian and fair faces appear disproportionately on our TV screens and our billboards?

Why is it that people with fair skin are often seen as 'gorgeous' and therefore more models are fair rather than dark?"

The simple answer to that is that we have been socialised in a way to equate beauty with fair skin. This in turn is intertwined with the construction of post-colonial identity and power-derived conceptions of beauty. Fair and white skin are not intrinsically beautiful, yet we treat it as if it is. This symptom is not unique to our country.

Even the Bollywood stars have looks that are not typical of all Indians. Let us ask ourselves - is it a coincidence that the very famous Ashwariya Rai has a very fair skin tone and is projected in her L'oreal advertisements for example, as almost Caucasian?

Why is it that very few Indians, if any, with dark skin make it 'big' in Bollywood? In the American music industry and in Hollywood itself, this pattern repeats itself. If you did not know who Beyonce was and you saw her new album cover for instance, you could be excused for thinking she was white. It is clear that being beautiful is associated with being fair.

Therefore, while Zainuddin's comments may appear to be discriminatory, we should treat it as a call to examine our own conceptions of beauty itself. Once we do that we will realise that our sense of what is beautiful and what is TV-worthy is perverted by the subconscious worship of white-ness and all its implications.

Perhaps then, Zam's comments will not appear so 'stupid' after all.