Unfair and unlovely

Column for Mathrubhumi

(Translated in Malayalam)

If you replace the word "Fair" with "Glow", is it proof that you are not concerned about skin colour? Thanks to the Black Lives Movement in the US, which has drawn attention to the pernicious problem of race, here in India multinational companies have been compelled to question the content of their marketing campaigns and the nature of their products. 

One multinational company, Hindustan Unilever Limited (HUL), which has raked in millions of dollars selling the dream of a fair skin to generations of Indian women, wants us to believe that it has had a change of heart by changing one word in its product. The reality, however, is very different.

For decades, women's groups have objected to the very idea of a cream that will turn darker women fair and in turn, make them more attractive, more successful and certainly more presentable for the marriage market.  They argued that such a concept is not just racist, because it decides a person's worth according to skin colour but in the Indian context it is also casteist, as the marginalised castes are always represented as being darker.  For women, this kind of equation of skin colour and self-worth is even worse in a society where they are regarded and treated as second class citizens because of their gender.

Despite these campaigns, the company went ahead selling the product with the same message: fairer is lovelier.  It made a few changes in its advertising campaign, trying to show so-called "empowered" women but it made no change in either the formulation of the cream, or its name. 

Its success in India only goes to illustrate how our society continues to believe, and reinforce in so many ways, that fair is beautiful and dark is ugly. Generations of little girls grow up believing this, seeing pictures in books, in films, in advertising that always show beautiful women as fair.  Even actresses who have darker skins are forced to take steps to look fairer in order to be successful.

The main objection to this type of product and the message it was sending came from women who were fighting for the rights of women as human beings.  They argued that the worth of a woman should not be reduced to the colour of her skin, or the shape of her body.  Women ought to be respected as citizens, as individuals who have capabilities and talents like anyone else.

Yet, the disease of fairness, that is deeply rooted not just in our colonial past but also in the entrenched system of caste that differentiates between people, will not disappear.  Girls born with a darker skin are always made to feel as if they are inferior.  Their fair-skinned counterparts grow up being liked and applauded for something they did not achieve but something they were born with.  Even if a darker skinned girl is more talented, and indeed more beautiful, she has to struggle much harder to gain recognition than a girl with a light skin, even if she is less intelligent or talented. 

In the US, companies are withdrawing products that promote fair skin.  This is what we need in India, not just a name change.  Only then can companies that have manufactured and promoted such products convince us that they have understood the message that the Black Lives Movement is sending. 

That message is that the colour of your skin should not decide you destiny. That societies that discriminate against their citizens on the basis of their skin colour are racist and unequal. And that to build a just society, the scourge of racial discrimination, and in our case in India also caste discrimination must end.