A Beautiful Mind

Scene 1: A woman insults her makeup artist which is witnessed by his daughter. Fuming, she blasts her dad to put make up for her so that she can become a star. He gives XYZ cream, applying on she turns white and becomes famous.

Scene 2: Group of girls is practicing for a dance show and the dull looking girl is pushed back. Then comes the savior, ABC Cream and she come to front row and impress the audience.

I've always ostracized products targeting men or women that promote discrimination on the basis of skin color. In recent, these new ads have hit a disgusting new low. Women ads mostly shows that they are succeeding after getting fair and men ads shows that women started liking them only after they are fair.  These are demeaning to women.

The fact that India has always been obsessed with fair skin is well known. Skin tone is considered as a foremost trait among many young Indians looking for romance. Have a look at the matrimonial sites, crazy guys want fair and white skinned girls and  no doubt girls are falling head over heels to look 'fair and lovely'. After 90's, most of the fairness cream makers identified India as their potential market to make hell lot of profit because of our population and the desire to become fair. This is ably supported by Indians crowning Worlds and Universes. The fact that these ads assume that the customers are dumber really gets to me. They spread all the negative stereotypes associated with dark skinned people. You need to be fair and white if you want to be successful.  Even the Europeans and Americans take sunbath to prevent skin diseases and increase the melanin content, but we who have it in us naturally want to become white and fair. But what we fail to get is these creams are sun-protection lotions with mild bleaching agents to remove tan. 

While few creams constrained their propaganda of lighter shade of skin in a matter of few weeks through advertisements in televisions and newspapers, a new fairness cream has stretched its boundaries to enter into Facebook application. Vaseline for men allows users to change their profile pictures, a few shades lighter that will be reflected in their looks after using the cream. The page already has 760 plus fans- A sad reflection on society's obsession with physical beauty. So being black or brown is a curse? I never cared about my color and I didn’t get what relates beauty and color? Can you turn a crow into a white pigeon? Then how can you transform a black-skinned woman into white within seven days?

 

Though the ads promote complexion prejudices, it reflects what society wants. It’s my personal opinion whether I care about the skin color but there are people who want fair skin. There are people who think that having fairer skin makes you more attractive. The ad simply portrays that. When our mind will come out of the notion that fair skin is beautiful and dark skin is ugly? Hard work and Success makes us beautiful. Beauty is inside you, not in the products.

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