The Trophy White Wife

Last night I was having dinner at Bombay Garden, and I noticed that there was a group of white women sitting at the table next to the dessert area. With them was a young man, ostensibly the boyfriend of one of the women. I couldn't tell if he was Indian or not, though he could pass for one. (He was lighter-skinned than the Indians you would see in the Silicon Valley.) It brought to mind something that an "Indian" reader wrote at VFR:

Whilst they are strictly endogamous, and almost militant about marrying within their caste, all rules go out the window when their precious child wants to marry a white. As with blacks, marrying a white is the ultimate Indian status symbol, especially when it’s a white girl.

It is understandable why we non-whites who were born in the United States might idealize white beauty, though this may be changing slowly as television and the movies becomes more ethnically diverse. Why wouldn't this also be true overseas, with white women being perceived as the "exotic" beauty? I can't say white beauties have dominated through the export of movies abroad, as native beauties can compete through the mass media as well, but their presence in movies has had an impact on the popular imagination. Still, it does intrigue me when a white Catholic woman marries an Indian man. I know of at least two instances of this; I think at least one of the grooms was Catholic as well. How well did the first adopt the culture of her husband's family? She did visit India and got her skin colored with henna. iirc, she also wore an Indian dress for part of the wedding festivities. She came from a traditionalist family; were there no white traditionalist Catholic men interested in her?