Fair and Lovely

We Need to Question the Flawed Nature of Ads

Irrespective of how hideous their production process is, capitalists promote their products by commodifying our emotions.

If anyone is aware of the recent events in the US and the effects they have had on a global scale, they know that fair is no longer lovely. Recently, Hindustan Unilever Limited decided to drop the word ‘fair’ from the name of their product Fair & Lovely. Some other companies selling similar products are also contemplating about follow suit.

This decision is claimed to be a result of years of criticism against the advertisement and sale of such products amplified by the recent Black Lives Matter protests against racism. While many are considering it as a small step towards victory, some are still questioning the very requirement of such beauty products. However, when it comes to advertising, most of us fail to acknowledge the crucial role it plays in furthering the interest of investing companies in multiplying their capital, which aids the smooth functioning of a capitalistic system.

The purpose of advertisement is to create a loyal customer base among prospective consumers in our society. To achieve this goal, advertisements typically manufacture a sense of insecurity and build an anticipation of gratification among us, and exploit the same. Additionally, through advertisements, we happen to attach some values with certain products, especially those endorsed by well-known personalities.

Advertisements are only criticised when there is explicit depiction or promotion of sexism, racism and harmful cultural stereotypes. But we should not limit our criticism to their method of portrayal, since the problem lies at the very core of its concept.

The evolving nature of capital is such that it readily moulds itself to fit into the prevalent dynamics of the class of people it looks to exploit. For example, earlier, most advertisements would reinforce widely accepted gender roles in our society by associating masculinity with products like cars, men’s deodorants and soft drinks, and femininity with household products.

Also read: Gillette’s Done With Toxic Masculinity, But Are Its Customers?

So, in 1954, the Marlboro Man was created to masculinise filter cigarettes which were till then considered to be feminine. However, over time, women of these classes have been voicing their opinions and highlighting the blatant portrayal of gender bias in advertisements. In order to satiate these shifts in social thinking, capitalism adapted itself accordingly. Now we have advertisement slogans, like ‘Share the load’ by Ariel and ‘Why should boys have all the fun?’ by Hero Pleasure.

The sentiments associated with social equality, religious harmony, childhood nostalgia and liberal conscience have also been portrayed and commodified to sell to us products like Surf Excel Washing Powder, Brooke Bond Red Label Tea and Paper Boat Juice.

A number of companies which thrive on cheap labour, especially child labour, sell their products wrapped in progressiveness. For example, Tata tea instills a sense of responsibility, encouraging us to become model citizens all the while the brand sourcing its tea leaves from plantations where workers have to struggle to receive even minimum wage and security. Similarly, companies like Nestle and Cadbury have been implicated for sourcing their raw materials from plantations that employ child labour. In their advertisements, however, they rather show pictures of smiling and satisfied plantations workers, and children overjoyed on consuming chocolate to add an extra edge to their promotion.

In these multiple ways, irrespective of how hideous their production process is, capitalists promote their products by commodifying any feeling we hold dear to ourselves. They do not shy away from exploiting our sense of equality, consciousness and reminiscence, in a bid to mask the exploitative nature of capitalism.

In the process of creating a loyal customer base for their products, giant corporations drive out or subsume their potential competitors, especially the local producers. This is another fundamental characteristic of capitalism. When the names of only three or four companies are hammered into our heads through insistent advertising, we develop a sense of disdain towards other similar goods in the market – goods which serve the same purpose, are probably cheaper, but are not as popular, because these producers are unable to bear the costs of extensive advertisement.

Advocates of capitalism are vocal about the associated benefits of efficiency by encouraging competition among producers. However, aggressive advertisement techniques adopted by a few large corporations serve as an invisible ‘barrier to entry’ for small and local producers, thereby eroding the essence of competition.

Thus, we see that both the commodification of social norms and our sentiments, and the eroding of competition, create, nurture and maintain a set of faithful customers. The sole purpose of capital is to make profit and this is achieved through constant manufacture of demand for products funded by capitalists.

We may have evolved into a society where the word ‘fair’ has been dropped from the name of a product, but we continue to be hostages to the whims of capital as long as we fail to realise that the purpose of advertisements is to present us with nothing more than an ostentatious packaging of our emotions and practices.

Annesha Mukherjee and Satyaki Dasgupta are research scholars at Centre for Development Studies, JNU

Featured image credit: YouTube screengrab

Amidst Anti-Colourist Movement, Hindustan Unilever Drops ‘Fair’ in ‘Fair & Lovely’

The Black Lives Matter movement has led to a resurgence of conversations about India’s role in promulgating colourism within its own borders.

New Delhi: Hindustan Unilever (HUL) announced on Thursday that it will be rebranding its flagship brand ‘Fair & Lovely’ by terminating the use of the word ‘Fair’. According to a press release, the new name of the HUL product line is “awaiting regulatory approvals” and should be changed in the next few months.

On June 19, Johnson & Johnson had also announced that it would stop selling its ‘Clean and Clear Fairness’ line of products in India, among other skin-whitening products sold in Asia.

This move comes in the wake of the ongoing anti-racism and anti-colourism movement in the United States and across the globe — the Black Lives Matter movement. The movement has led to a resurgence of conversations about India’s role in promulgating colourism within its own borders.

HUL claims that it has been an advocate for women’s empowerment over the past decade. The company cites a shift toward using words like “glow, even tone, skin clarity and radiance” instead of “fairness, whiteness and skin lightening” to advertise their products as an example of its commitment “to celebrating all skin tones”.

HUL’s ‘Fair & Lovely’ cream was launched in 1978. Since then, several products claiming to “brighten the skin” such as those by L’Oréal, Garnier and Emami have saturated the Indian market. They have been endorsed by many mainstream Hindi cinema actors such as Deepika Padukone, Katrina Kaif, Sonam Kapoor and Shahrukh Khan.

Celebrities such as Priyanka Chopra Jonas have been criticised for their performative social media activism in support of the BLM movement while endorsing these colourist products.

Celebrities, nationally and globally, like Kajol, Sridevi and Mindy Kaling, have been accused of undergoing skin-lightening surgery to appeal to the demands of their industry and audiences.

Also read: Skin Lightening Is a Dangerous Obsession – and One Worth Billions

The normalisation of fair skin via Bollywood and regional Indian cinema has resulted in an almost national preference for lighter skin in other streams of life such as matrimony. Following a petition signed by more than 1,600 individuals, India’s popular matrimonial site, shaadi.com, removed the colour filter on its website overnight, calling it a “blindspot”.

However, India’s battle with colourism runs deeper than the mechanics of a capitalist fairness cream industry. In a news report by Al Jazeera, former Lok Sabha MP Udit Raj said, “Colour prejudice is an offshoot of the bigger evil of casteism in India.” Lighter skin has been historically equated to an indicator of power, wealth and caste privilege in India.

Also read: The Indian Hatred for Dark Skin Comes From Caste Bias

Unilever, HUL’s holding company, has previously been under fire for their environmentally unethical practices in Kodaikanal, exposed by rapper Sofia Ashraf through a 2015 viral video titled “Kodaikanal Won’t”. The multinational corporation agreed to a settlement with its workers the next year only to be accused of “environmental racism” in 2018 via a sequel viral video.

Also read: Watch | In ‘Kodaikanal Still Won’t’, Artists Call Out Unilever’s ‘Environmental Racism’

HUL was also criticised by the Advertising Standards Council of India of misleading advertising to promote its ‘Fair and Lovely’ and ‘Lifebuoy’ products. Its 2007 television advertisement featuring Saif Ali Khan, Neha Dhupia and Priyanka Chopra was highly criticised for its promotion of colourism.

More recently, India’s casual dismissal of the engrained societal colour prejudice was highlighted by former West Indies cricket captain Darren Sammy. Sammy expressed his disappointment with his cricket colleagues for addressing him by a racial slur under the garb of affection.

What followed Sammy’s public appeal to his former teammates led to a nationwide campaign of gaslighting the victim of racism. Several civilians came to the defence of India’s colourism in the comments, telling Sammy that the slur was used “as a joke”, claiming that he had “misunderstood” his teammates.

Ayushi Agarwal is a student at Emory University and an intern at The Wire. She tweets at @ayushiag.

In Bengal, Colourism Hides Behind the Veneer of Bhadralok Culture

The famous sense of “enlightened Bengali exceptionalism” did not quite extend to people with darker skin complexion.

Growing up in Kolkata, I remember hearing the words “gayer rong-ta ektu moyla” (her skin is grimy/dirty) to describe women with dark-complexions. Men, though not entirely unscathed by such prevalent aversion to darkness, got away somewhat easily. The famous sense of “enlightened Bengali exceptionalism” did not quite extend to these matters. In fact, in celebrating fair skin and scouring matrimonial advertisements for ‘fair, educated, homely brides,’ Bengalis were – and continue to be – as colourist as the rest of the country.

Dark-skinned women, often forced to ‘settle’ for arranged marriages, were given the short shrift for their moyla gayer rong. Rejections based on skin colour were a normal thing, accepted without much of a demur. Dark-skinned parents giving birth to light-skinned children and vice-versa were a matter of wonder – something to be commented upon with amused derision. As with casteism, colourism then and as now, hides behind the veneer of bhadralok culture. Unspoken and unchallenged in any meaningful way, such discrimination has continued to thrive.

The West Indian cricket player Daren Sammy recently drew attention to this ‘casual’ everyday racism in India. He wanted a response from fellow Indian cricketers who called him ‘Kalu’ – apparently, a term of endearment, according to some of his colleagues. India’s celebrity cricketers, unlike celebrity sportsmen in the US, who are presently in the eye of a storm for taking a knee and rooting for Black Lives Matter, kept mum. And, of course, for cricketers and celebrities alike, silence is a habit when it comes to contentious matters that affect the lives of their millions of fans.

Also Read: Darren Sammy’s Revelations Show Indian Cricketers Are Glaringly Ignorant on Race, Colour

Racism is common across the class divide in India. If elites look down upon darker-skinned people, subalterns are not above reproach. The large consumer base for products like the by-now infamous ‘Fair and Lovely’ cream shows racism to be a gender-neutral affliction that has the power to seduce all classes. I remember buying a facewash from a local departmental store in Delhi, back in the days when we could still move around without fear of viruses and ailing health systems. The genial shopkeeper handed me a Fair and Lovely, free with the facewash. When I said I didn’t want it, he reminded me I wouldn’t have to pay for it. After my repeated refusals, he took the cream back. But it was clear from his expression that he didn’t understand the logic by which a dark-skinned woman would refuse a product that could ‘set her appearance right’.

Nowhere is racist prejudice more evident than in ways Indian society responds to people from African nations. An educated relative in Kolkata, pointing towards an African man on the street once said to me, “Ora ektu beshi kaalo (they are a bit too dark).” I remember, during my years as a reporter, spending time with a Nigerian journalist who was doing an internship with an English daily in Delhi. As we stepped out of the Press Trust of India building at lunchtime, with babus milling around the place, we found ourselves under intense scrutiny; many people bunched together in groups, openly gawking at us. I commented on how uncomfortable it must have been for my colleague to navigate a city where reactions of this kind are all too common. He smiled and said he had gotten used to the stares and sniggers.

At a classical music performance by Rashid Khan at Kolkata’s Birla Mandir earlier this year, two upper-middle class women sitting next to me made disparaging comments about the dark young woman usher. “Or mukhta dekho, dekhe mone hoi classical music bojhe? (Look at her face, does she look like she has any understanding of classical music?)”

Earlier this week, the Bengal government suspended two teachers in East Burdwan district for giving alphabet lessons from a book with racist prejudices against darker people. In a lesson aimed at familiarising alphabets through words corresponding to them, the book used the word ‘Ugly’ for ‘U,’ and pictured a dark-skinned boy for visual representation. The incident shows how ‘casual’ and ‘normal’ it has become to draw equivalences between fair skin and attractiveness on the one hand, and darkness and ugliness on the other.

“I was a dark baby, born to a mother and two grandmothers with pearly, translucent skin. I’m not exaggerating when I say that my skin tone was the centre point of all conversations in my growing up years,” writes Tia Basu. “We could begin talking about rohu, but it would end up at my skin. We could be discussing Didi and still it would somehow turn to my skin. Relatives flowing in and out of my life thought nothing of repeatedly remarking, ‘Or rong ta ektu moyla’ (Her colour is rather dirty),” she adds, returning us to the phrase I began with – a phrase millions have grown up hearing and imbibing.

African students in India demonstrate against racist violence. Credit: PTI/Files

African students in India demonstrate against racism. Photo: PTI/Files

Just skimming the surface

All this is just skimming the surface of deep-seated tendencies in Indian society. Further, racist bias against darker skin is not the only prejudice actively at work in everyday life. There are other competing kinds of discrimination, each equally unacceptable. In recent years, especially, caste, religion and colour have all been used to ratchet up a divisive politics that exploits social fault-lines with expertise.

Also Read: For How Long Will Indians Hold on to Their Obsession With Fair Skin?

Some analysts explain racism as one of the unfortunate consequences of colonial rule, which they argue, could be one way to understand our continued enchantment with white-skin. But does Bengal’s long tryst with the British Raj cogently explain the continuance and strengthening of racism, the passion with which we still embrace whiteness while rejecting darkness? Of course, colonial history played a part – a significant part – in fuelling these feelings and tendencies. But it would be disingenuous to rest easy, thinking that we can pin all the blame for our continued fear and disgust of those who don’t look like us on colonialism.

Racism – like classism, casteism, masculinism (the list is disturbingly long) – is a structural malaise. We continue to feed these discriminatory practices, either openly or in hushed tones during private conversations. It’s too easy to think our capacity for hatred is entirely a product of someone else’s actions. Until we take responsibility for our complicity in dehumanising others, no paeans to tolerance or hospitality will count for much.

Exploring ‘The Bluest Eye’, Beauty and Colourism

Pecola’s obsession with ‘blue eyes’ in Toni Morrison’s book resonates with Anglophile tendencies that I grapple with.

To be honest, I didn’t start reading Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye with the noblest of intentions. More than immersing myself in Pecola’s grievances, or navigating the crippling consequences of institutional racism, I hoped to get talking points so that I could flash around my half bit knowledge.

I don’t know at what point in the book, I realised there was an uncanny semblance between virtually all the characters in the book and me. To compare the institutional racism which existed in America in the 1940s and the subtle, nuanced and deliberately ignored colourism (defined by Alice Walker as “prejudicial or preferential treatment of same-race people based solely on their colour”) which exists in India wold not be a ‘fair’ valuation.

But try convincing a child, who believes she is ugly because the complexion of her favourite actress is shades lighter than her own, that she is beautiful, then you’ll see where the difference ends and the similarity begins. To a child, abstract notions of beauty are hard to grasp so naturally she looks at the society around her in a fallacious attempt to objectify and consolidate a concept which at its heart is purely subjective. When what she sees around her is so far removed from who she is, it starts hacking at her own self worth. In the words of Morrison, “the death of self esteem can occur quickly, easily in children, before their ego has ‘legs’, so to speak.”

Pecola’s obsession with ‘blue eyes’ resonates with Anglophile tendencies that I grapple with. These Anglophile tendencies manifest in ways other than a mere adulation for fair skin, for instance, it also manifests as a strong desire to emulate the western culture and clothing, their mannerisms, and their accent. This leads to ‘Geraldine’sque behaviour on my part, embittered, unauthentic and resentful of my ‘Indian-ess’. And like them, my Anglophilia was a learned behaviour; when my classmates called me ‘pretty’ it was almost always immediately followed by ‘too bad you are dark’. I realised through this backhanded compliment that the colour of my skin is something undesirable, something that tarnishes ‘my beauty’.

And when a classmate asked me to mask my Indian accent with an English one, I realised that society attaches more importance to the way I speak rather than what I say.Its easy to say ‘Why don’t you just ignore it?’ Or in the context of the story, ‘Why did Pecola and the Breedloves believe they were ugly?’

Well, Morrison puts it brilliantly when she says, “It was as though some mysterious all- knowing master had given each one a cloak of ugliness to wear, and they had each accepted it without question. The master had said, “You are ugly people.” They had looked about themselves and saw nothing to contradict the statement; saw, in fact, support for it leaning at them from every billboard, every movie, every glance. “Yes,” they had said. “You are right.”

To put it simply, when the media, the advertisements (we all remember the dreaded fair and lovely ads and according to a 2015 study by Neha Mishra almost 90% of all advertisements show lighter skinned models.), the unsolicited advice on how to lighten the colour of my skin by well – meaning aunties and uncles (“use haldi and drink saffron milk”), all strengthen the conviction that brown is ugly. Its possible to repress the insecurities and anaesthetise the hurt, but its hard to be indifferent, to not care.

Also read: Mirror, Mirror on the Wall

And for quite some time, I was successful in carrying out the masquerade of being a faux intellectual and a practiced hypocrite who scoffs and ridicules those who place too much importance on physical beauty or the colour of their skin. However The Bluest Eye tore down all my defences and left me as naked and vulnerable as that little girl who didn’t think she was pretty. Who was filled with resentment and self contempt. Deeply relatable, it dug out all my unresolved issues.

Why do we need to address colourism? And how do we resolve this? When asked “What is the most important thing young girls need to be taught today?”, Miss Universe 2019 Zozibini Tunzi replied without missing a beat, “Leadership”. She added further, “We need to teach young girls to take up space in society”. A number of studies link experiences of colourism with low self-esteem, depression and other psychiatric and psychological difficulties . Therefore colourism becomes an inhibiting factor that prevents a young girl from reaching her true potential. Though boys also face stigmatisation on the lines of skin colour, studies have shown that colourism is gendered, with most of the stigma directed towards the ‘fairer sex’ (pardon the pun). There are also studies which show that colourism impacts job opportunities.

In my opinion, any comprehensive solution begins with dialogue. Campaigns like “Unfair and Lovely,” where women post photos that celebrate their dusky complexion are certainly progressive and welcome change. Moreover, professionals need to acknowledge the reality of colourism, and not just offer condescending remarks like, “change your attitude, because society is not going to change theirs.” And most importantly, representation is the most crucial and important step towards ending colourism.

A friend of mine once told me about a boy in her class who she disliked. On further inquiry as to why, she casually admitted with an indifferent shrug, “He is black.” I don’t know what’s worse, her casual admission of such blatant colourism or the fact that I, though uncomfortable and deeply shocked, laughed it off. I stayed up all night that day, thinking about why I didn’t say anything to change her mind and a tiny voice in the back of my head said, “Maybe that’s how they think of me as well.”

Today, looking back at that incident, I have an inkling as to why I didn’t say anything; maybe its because I knew, deep inside, that if I was in her place I wouldn’t have made much of an effort to talk to him either.

Because this colourism is deeply rooted in each and every one of us. We fall prey to senseless stereotypes and prejudices. And for this very reason, I don’t think that anything I could’ve said that would’ve changed her mind, but one thing I will do if I see her again would be to recommend this book to her. Because Toni Morrison puts into words better than I ever could the damaging consequences of this demonisation, this pointless and meaningless contempt over something people have no control over. And if this book does not change her mind, then I don’t know what will!

And as for me? Well, I’m still pondering the depth and potency of the statement, “Beauty is not simply something to behold, it is something one could do.”

Thejalakshmi is a law student, bookworm and a conscientious member of society who is deeply interested in politics and debates.

Featured image credit: Unsplash

‘Bala’ Review: A Performative Film That Lacks Self-Awareness

There is a wide chasm between its self-congratulatory, ‘noble’ message and its weak and simplistic story.

Amar Kaushik’s Bala – centred on a young man facing an identity crisis because of his balding head – is obsessed with hair. As the opening credits roll, we see people of different ages getting haircuts; some of them have remarkable hairstyles – the names of cast and crew are on the right-bottom side of the screen, on which strands of animated hair fall. The voiceover, by Vijay Raaz, talks about the significance and vitality of hair. The voiceover, we soon find out, is not by a person but (metaphorical) hair itself. The film’s hero, played by Ayushmann Khurrana, is called “Bala”. (Obviously.) The film then cuts to Kanpur in 2005 where, in a classroom, a bald man is drawn on a blackboard with “takle” (bald) written beside it.

A certain kind of Hindi film is obsessed with its ‘quirky’ central idea – it functions as the film’s theme and its story – and the makers spend an inordinate amount of time reinforcing that thought. More often than not, that film is set in a north Indian small-town, depicting regular people’s lives with purported realism. An ordinary life, however, is not just a function of an eccentricity; it is varied and multidimensional. This obsession with the logline, then, both seems divorced from the people and the milieu (in this case, say, the movie’s opening credits) — a self-serving exercise that starts and ends with the film, a misguided approach that sees this world from the outside.

Bala doesn’t learn from the mistakes of its first five minutes, rather repeats it, smug and convinced that it has unlocked the central anxiety of the Indian middle-class. The story, in short, is this: Bala, tormented by his loss of hair, tries different ways to restore the patch but nothing helps. His girlfriend has recently dumped him for the same reason; he finally finds some succour in a toupee and falls in love with a local model and TikTok star, Pari (Yami Gautam). Parallelly, there’s the story of Latika (Bhumi Pednekar), Bala’s classmate, who was shamed by him, and others, for her dark complexion. Bala, in a cruel twist of fate, is a marketing professional for a skin-whitening cream.

But the contradictions in Bala – the wide chasm between its self-congratulatory, ‘noble’ message and weak, simplistic story (propped up by questionable means) – never let you be a part of the film. Take Pednekar, for instance, who has been blackwashed so starkly, and so shockingly, that it takes some time to register that impact. The cruel irony of Latika – always snubbed in school plays because of her skin colour, played by an otherwise fair (and hence pretty) actress, blackened for the role – is remarkable for its tone-deafness. It is all the more bizarre, when Pednekar, for the entire runtime, plays an independent, confident woman – she’s a lawyer – who literally says at one point, “Humein apne rang se koi problem nahin hai (I don’t have any problem with my complexion).” Well, clearly.

In another scene, when Pari is shooting an ad for a fairness cream, where a woman’s complexion transforms from dark to fair, we hear someone on the set say, “Arre, ise aur gora bana do (Make her fairer).” The makers think it’s playing out like comedic social commentary – ‘oh, look the society’s obsession with whiteness!’ – while being completely oblivious that the joke here, if at all, is on them.

Worse, the film misrepresents its central character. Bala is, in no uncertain terms, insensitive, entitled, dishonest, and a creep – even his ‘redemption’ is devoid of introspection or genuine remorse – and yet the film keeps bending backwards to convince us that he’s a hero, that he deserves our empathy. Bala is so self-absorbed with its own cleverness that it fails to ask itself a critical question: Who is this pathetic man whose entire identity rests on his balding head? Should you care for him? And if you do, then what does that say about the definition of Indian masculinity? Bala isn’t a 25-year-old man but a crabby adolescent, who wants the entire world to compensate for his flaw.

The film is disingenuous in other ways, too – especially the manner in which it tries to exploit the 90s’ nostalgia through TikTok videos, filmed on Khurrana and Gautam. Again, the device itself is not a problem – it was done wonderfully in another Khurrana starrer, Dum Laga Ke Haisha (2015) – but here, it looks like an addendum, an afterthought carefully planted to elicit easy laughs.

Uninspired casting

Even the casting is so uninspired. Khurrana, competent as always, has done the role of a confused small-town man so many times that he seems on auto-pilot. Even the sidekick (Abhishek Banerjee), playing a good-hearted buffoon, is a repeat of a repeat. Here, he looks as if he walked straight out of the sets of Stree. Amar Kaushik is, in fact, the director of Stree, one of my favourite films of last year, and it looks to have been made by a completely different guy. (After watching Bala, I’ve a feeling that Stree’s writers — Raj Nidimoru and Krishna D.K., who also created the excellent The Family Man – had a huge part to play in that film’s success.)

Hackneyed casting has plagued even quasi-alternate Hindi cinema for a long time. The biggest example of that is Nawazuddin Siddiqui, a less severe example Sanjay Mishra, and now that problem – an utter inability to think beyond easy, accepted conventions – seems to be percolating to actors playing more peripheral roles as well. The biggest misfire has to be the casting of Gautam though — in the role of a model endorsing fairness cream, allowing the film to garner social awareness points — when she herself, while appearing in ads for Fair & Lovely, has been a poster-girl for such regressive mindset.

Bala’s climax, with a clever, heartening twist, could well be the only good thing about this movie. But when a film displays an abject lack of self-awareness throughout its runtime, then its suddenly conscious climax sticks out: It doesn’t seem heartfelt but performative, another ruse to mislead and trick the audience. If only Bala were that smart. It is simply – and I know this is too easy – ‘hair’-brained.

Actress Sai Pallavi Refuses to Endorse Fairness Creams

In the interview, she opened up about her thoughts on the impact that such advertisements have on the minds of youngsters.

New Delhi: South Indian actress Sai Pallavi has confirmed that she rejected an offer to star in an ad to endorse a fairness cream.

After several media reports claimed that Pallavi had rejected the offer to endorse a fairness cream, she ended the speculation by confirming, in an interview with Telugu website Behindwoods, her decision to turn down a Rs 2 crore advertisement deal with a fairness cream brand.

Sai Pallavi rose to prominence with her roles in Athiran and Maari 2.

In the interview to Behindwoods, she opened up about her thoughts on the impact that such advertisements have on the minds of youngsters. According to HuffPost India, Pallavi said, “This is Indian colour. We can’t go to foreigners and ask them why they’re white, and if they know that they will get cancer because of it. We can’t look at them and think we want that. That’s their skin colour and this is ours. Africans have their own colour too and they are beautiful.”

Also read: For How Long Will Indians Hold on to Their Obsession With Fair Skin?

She also added that the monetary compensation for the advertisement was not a matter of concern for her. “What will I do with the money I get from such an ad? I’ll go home and eat three chapatis or rice, go around in my car. I don’t have other big needs. I see if I can contribute to the happiness of people around me or if I can say that these standards we see are wrong,” she said.

Pallavi also recounted a childhood incident in the interview about the impact that notions of fairness had on her sister and how she had “tricked” her sister into eating fruits and vegetables by telling her that it would “give her a fair complexion”.

Pallavi joins a burgeoning cohort of celebrities who have publicly questioned the impact that fairness creams have on skewed notions of beauty. Celebrities like Abhay Deol, Kangana Ranaut, Kalki Koechlin and Nandita Das have openly criticised products that glorify fair complexions.

Recently, a collage consisting of Miss India finalists faced backlash on social media for a lack of diversity of skin colours amongst its beauty pageant contestants, underscoring the conventional notions of fairness and beauty that are prevalent in India.

As India’s Love for Light Skin Continues, Some Younger Women are Pushing Back

Aranya Johar’s Brown Girl’s Guide to Beauty, a spoken-word poem containing lines like “Forget snow-white/say hello to chocolate brown/I’ll write my own fairy-tale” went viral, reaching 1.5 million viewers in its first day alone.

Aranya Johar’s Brown Girl’s Guide to Beauty, a spoken-word poem containing lines like “Forget snow-white/say hello to chocolate brown/I’ll write my own fairy-tale” went viral, reaching 1.5 million viewers in its first day alone.

In India, a light complexion is associated with power, status and beauty, fuelling an innovative and growing market of skin-bleaching products. Credit: Adam Jones/Flickr CC BY-SA via The Conversation

From Sunday classified ads touting the marriageability of an “MBA graduate. 5-½ ft. English medium. Fair complexion” to elderly aunties advising young women to apply saffron paste to “maintain your skin whiter and smoother”, the signs are everywhere.

Even sentiments like, “She got lucky he married her despite her [dark] complexion” are still whispered around India in 2017.

Younger generations are now starting to push back. On July 7, 18-year-old Aranya Johar published her Brown Girl’s Guide to Beauty on Youtube. The video, a spoken-word poem containing lines like “Forget snow-white/say hello to chocolate brown/I’ll write my own fairy-tale” went viral, reaching 1.5 million viewers around the world in its first day alone.

Johar’s candid slam came just before Bollywood actor Nawazuddin Siddiqui used Twitter to indict the Indian film industry’s racist culture. His post recalled the vehement pushback of actress Tannishtha Chatterjee, who was was bullied for her skin tone on live TV in 2016.

Though many Indians still feign ignorance about social discrimination based on skin colour, the country’s obsession with whiteness can also be violent. In recent years, fear of black and brown skin has also spurred harassment and attacks on African students living in India.

The bleaching syndrome

But why do Indians so hate their own colour? History offers some answers.

Throughout medieval and modern history, the Indian subcontinent has been on the radar of various European settlers and traders, including, from the 15th to 17th centuries, the Portuguese, Dutch and French. The subcontinent was invaded and partly ruled by the Mughals in the 16th century, and colonised by the British from the 17th century onwards until independence in 1947. All these foreign “visitors” were of relatively fair complexion and many claimed to be superior.

Being subject to a succession of white(ish) overlords has long associated light skin with power, status and desirability among Indians. Today, the contempt for brown skin is embraced by both the ruling class and lower castes, and reinforced daily by beauty magazine covers that feature almost exclusively Caucasian, often foreign, models.

It’s been the dark man’s burden in this majority-non-white nation to desire a westernised concept of beauty, and post-colonial activism has not been able to change this.

According to a study we conducted from 2013 to 2016, 70% of the 300 women and men we interviewed reported wanting a date or partner with someone who had light skin. This colourism is what pushes so many Indians to lighten their skin, creating a phenomenon termed “bleaching syndrome”.

Bleaching syndrome is not a superficial fashion, it’s a strategy of assimilating a superior identity that reflects a deep-set belief that fair skin is better, more powerful, prettier. And it’s not limited to India; skin bleaching is also common in the rest of Asia and in Africa.

A thriving bleaching market

An inventive and growing market of creams and salves has cropped up to fill this demand, which now pulls in over $400 million annually.

Some of the most widely-sold products include Fem, Lotus, Fair and Lovely and its gendered-equivalent Fair and Handsome. Most of these appealingly named creams are in fact a dangerous cocktail of steroids, hydroquinone, and tretinoin, the long-term use of which can lead to health concerns like permanent pigmentation, skin cancer, liver damage and mercury poisoning among other things.

Nonetheless, a 2014 marketing study found that almost 90% of Indian girls cite skin lightening as a “high need”. These young women are willing to overlook the after-effects of bleaching, and the advent of online sales allows them to use these products in the privacy of their own homes.

Initially focused on feminine beauty, the fairness creams market now also caters to Indian men. Products marketed to men promise to fight sweat, give them fairer underarms and attract women.

And Bollywood megastars with huge followings, including Shahrukh Khan and John Abraham, regularly endorse and promote skin bleaches.

Bleaching backlash

The brand Clean and Dry took bleaching to new levels in 2012, when it began heavily advertising for a new wash to lighten the vagina.

This time, women had had enough. In 2013, the activist group Women of Worth launched their Dark is Beautiful campaign, which was endorsed by actress Nandita Sen.

With other feminist groups, the women compelled the Advertising Standards Council of India to issue guidelines in 2014 stating that “ads should not reinforce negative social stereotyping on the basis of skin colour” or “portray people with darker skin [as]…inferior, or unsuccessful in any aspect of life particularly in relation to being attractive to the opposite sex”.

This guidance is in keeping with the Indian constitution, which provides for equality for all (article 14) and prohibits discrimination on the grounds of religion, race, caste, sex or place of birth (article 15).

Unfortunately, the law can do little to stop the subtler forms of racism and bigotry present in Indian society. And, to date, that vagina bleaching product is still on the market.

The “bleaching syndrome” goes far beyond skin colour, with Indian women also questioning their hair texture and colour, speech, marital choices and dress style, raising real concerns about female self-esteem.

As Aranya Johar rhymed on Youtube, “With the hope of being able someday to love another/let’s begin by being our own first lovers”.

Neha Mishra, Assistant Professor of Law, Reva University of Bangalore and Ronald Hall, Professor of Social Work, Michigan State University

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.