Womans body as a color measuring text: A signification of Bengali culture

Abstract

White and Black are the most frequently used colors that have dierent types of signification to human beings in terms of getting positive or nega- tive response. Among the color hierarchy, black, the darkest color from its absorption of all lights, always denotes some denial approaches to all as- pects in all societies because human beings believe that black usually eclipses all kinds of positive entities like daytime, virtue, light, etc. On the contrary, white, the lightest color from its reflection of all visible rays of light is treated as the symbol of sacredness, purity, innocence, honesty, power, etc., all over the world. These two concepts of cultural artifacts are applied to describe the human body, especially women's appearance in the Bengali community. Bengali ethnoculture, the most complex mechanism of a hier- archical structure of human ethnicity, gives social priority to man over woman and recognizes the woman entity only from the point of view of skin color. Hence, as a living text, the black color of a woman's body usually creates typical negative signification in the society, and the white color of a woman's skin semiosises conversely. As a result, Bengali people have already invented lots of 'secondary modeling systems' and introduced some beliefs of good and bad values in the society as the reflection of color dis- crimination of a woman's body that is considered a 'primary modeling system'. This article provides a brief discussion of the ethnosemiotics of Bengali culture from the point of view of color discrimination regarding women's bodies by giving emphasis to values and color concepts of Bengali people and examples of some cultural artifacts concerning prejudicial treatment on color behavior of society. Culture is a highly ambiguous phenomenon when it is defined as a 'way of life' or 'activities of human beings' because all human beings of the world from time immemorial bear the same feelings and the same basic