Advertisements showcasing faces adorned with short and fascinating expressions that move to appealing tunes and visuals leave a long-lasting impression on our minds. The fact that they instantly get etched in our memories, and make their way in our everyday conversation reverberates the strong ideological, cultural and social impact that they shed upon us.
While watching one of my favourite programmes this weekend, one of these advertisements that flashed across the screen drew my attention. It was a commercial for a ‘fairness cream’ which emphasised on the fact that how a ‘fairer skin’ infuses confidence and builds up trust in one’s potential. Basically, it showed that you love yourself even more, with fairer skin. The ad featured a female model who wanted to look fairer and beautiful as if the fairness of skin equates to the loveliness of personality.
This commercial portrayed a discouraged and disheartened, dark-skinned woman who was scorned by her colleagues and other men. However, when she used the cream, she managed to obtain lucrative career options in a split second once the cream had brightened her skin. Armed with fairness cream, the regenerated ardour of the woman lands her the position that she was trying to acquire
The fairness cream ads glorify a persons skin complexion as a part of their resume. They show that fairer women tend to have greater success at work. Calling someone “gora” or fair as the moon is the ultimate compliment which appeases them. What these beauty creams do, with or without the advertiser’s realisations, is bring forward horrific social traditions that compare fairness with high caste status, great looks and qualification for marriage.
In millions of matrimonial advertisements, a bride’s fair skin is much more important and is ranked higher than a university degree or professional status. A typical example shows that having a medical or graduate degree are secondary things. They usually are something like – “Wanted: really beautiful, fair, engineer for handsome, smart doctor.” The adjective ‘fair’ still precedes any other educational qualification.
Fair skin in India is necessary for every sphere of life and is considered to be an asset, especially for a woman. Though men also are not left behind in the race of instant fairness, they can still ‘breathe a sigh of relief’ due to the very concept of being “Tall, Dark and Handsome” aka marriage material. But as far as a woman is concerned, her dark complexion deteriorates her identity, even after being successful. And fairness creams prove to be a ‘magic wand’ for their fight with their ‘inferiority complex’.
Usually, in the Indian television industry, the lead roles are played by women with a fairer complexion. This is in part, done to capture the male audience. Here it is apt to refer to renowned feminist sociologist Laura Mulvey who in her work “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema” discusses the “male gaze”. She highlights how the television industry portrays women as an aesthetic object to the male characters for gaining male spectatorship.
Women are required to be beautiful and ‘look good’ for attracting the opposite sex. However, ‘looking good’ is synonymous with a ‘fair skin’. Skin-brightening cosmetics are a multi-billion industry that is pushing the idea that magnificence and beauty equate with white skin, and that brightening dark skin is both achievable and preferable. Skin whitening creams base beauty on a racial hierarchy which leads to genuine social damage.
The dominance of fair skin cannot be removed from the Indian society by banning such products. Instead, it can be tackled by eradicating the very ideology that associates ‘fair skin’ with potential, ability and confidence.
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