I'm Not Fair, But I'm Lovely

I was walking around Connaught Place today with a bunch of friends and came across this advertisement. A dark complexioned woman glances over her bare shoulder and proclaims that she is worthy of being called beautiful even though she is darker than most other Indians. While I know that many Indians consider white skin as a sign of beauty, I must admit to being completely confused by this ad and its message. It wasn't really selling a fairness cream and at the right hand bottom corner there is a picture of Obama *??!!??*

My interpretation of this ad for a newsmag is this - the content of news in this paper is not exactly "fair" or "balanced", but it's a good read anyway. The cryptic lines at below the first two lines read, "I'm not Yesterday!" HUH?

Anyhoo, this ad stands out because in a way it reflects the extension of the practice of apologizing for darker skin into ads for products which are not even selling a skin cream.

The promise of all good things falling into your lap if a woman is fair is a common refrain in ads which sell skin-whitening, lightening products. An old Fair and Lovely Fairness Cream ad depicted a father giving his daughter a tube of the magic cream. After four weeks of use she was fairer than before and grooms began soliciting her hand in marriage. The massive insecurity in Indian women about the shade of their brown skin (and no matter how fair one is we are still BROWN) has been created by a colonial hangover and perpetuated by cosmetic companies exploiting a ready market.

Preference for fair brides, fair air-hostesses, fair-skinned office girls and secretaries has led to some extreme skin-whitening treatements. The Kaaya Skin Clinic, Vandana Luthra Curls and Curves (VLCC), and several beauty salons offer such treatment. In many cases the cosmetics prescribed contain products called "penetration enhancers" which facilitate the breakdown of melanin in the skin. An EWG report on cosmetics labels these as "cancer causing" agents.

Even more interestingly, the same products are sold in the US as "radiance boosters". L'Oreal has a line called "Blanc Expert" where a bottle of magic fluid retails for 125 dollars. Other companies offer similar products all priced above 30 dollars for a 100 ml bottle.

I guess the highly evolved debate on race in the US has made it virtually impossible for any company to openly sell a skin-whitening product that suggests that darker people should be unhappy with their skin color. The recent controversy surrounding Beyonce's artificially enhanced fair skin in a L'Oreal ad drew attention to the growing influence of this new kind of skin care product. No longer is it enough to have good, clean, healthy skin. Your skin, if you are female, has to be white as snow.

All of this is very sad indeed and reminds me of this book I read a long time ago where a female offspring of a British army officer and an Indian maid, when sent to live in London in the wee 1900's; spends much time concealing her brown skin by over-powdering it. The cost of being discovered as 'not exactly white' are too horrific for her to imagine.

I am still waiting for a day when I can actually tromp around India and not have some one comment on how fair or dark I am (the comments vary depending on how fair or dark the commentators are). In the meanwhile I am going to satisfy myself by putting my cell-phone camera to good use to take more incriminating pictures of this insidious form of racism.

And in case the men think they're exempt from this pressure, try searching for "Fair and Handsome Fairness Cream".