South Indians, does it bother you that there are mostly North Indian women in your films?

Using film stars as proxies of public tastes in beauty is shit, sorry. Casting in movies has more to do with internal politics, nepotism, casting couch, etc., especially in India. Many actors and actresses are widely recognised as unattractive by the public (SRK, Rajinikanth, Kareena Kapoor, Ranbir Kapoor, etc.) or would be considered unattractive in real life if it weren't for their personal charm, wealth and fame.

It's unfortunately true that Indians give prime importance in skin colour in attractiveness (although how much idk). But equally true that they strongly favour Indian facial features.

Indian-Americans found Indian women with typical and average Indian features (smaller faces and shorter noses with larger eyes, etc.) more attractive than those with Westernised features. For comparison: the opposite was true for Korean-Americans, where the greater the woman resembled White women the more she was considered attractive.

There don't seem to be any more studies focusing on Indian tastes. But I used to dabble anthropology and it's assumed that more ancestrally progressed and neotenous faces and facial features, i.e. gracile/delicate faces, sharper nasal bones, flattened eyebrow region, smaller faces and jaws are considered more attractive (this what you see in East Asians a desire to go from their flatter features and larger faces to more delicate ones).

Indians, especially south Indians, have much smaller and more gracile faces and sharper upper nasal bones, etc. than Europeans. So I doubt Indians would favour Whites over Indians at all considering their lacking faces (unless the fetish for light is that strong). South Indians are slightly more gracile/neotenous so should technically be considered more attractive, but have darker skin so NI > SI it goes imo (until people stop caring about colour).

/r/india Thread