Why Fair & Lovely Finally Dropping ‘Fair’ Is Not Fair Enough
Indian obsession with fair skin
Hindustan Unilever Limited has finally changed the name of its famous Fair & Lovely, a skin lightening cream, to Glow & Lovely after 45 years since its inception. It has also promised to remove the words ‘skin lightening’, ‘fairness’, and ‘whitening’ from its marketing campaigns and will also remove advertisements about women getting fairer skin on using the cream.
For a country known as the land of myriad colors, rich cultural diversity, and delectable food, tragically, Indians are highly obsessed with fair skin, especially for women. Take a look at any person recommending any girl for marriage, she would definitely be fair, light-skinned, or at least the funniest one yet — wheatish. Dare a dark-skinned bride be looking for a groom.
India’s Obsession with Fair Skin
India is a hot and humid country (Southern half of the country is in the tropical zone while northern half in the temperate zone) and its inhabitant have been historically dark skinned. Numerous gods and goddesses (Krishna, Sita, Ram) in Hindu mythology are dark skinned.
In the 10th century, came fair skinned invaders from Central Asia, bringing along with them the concept of fair being beautiful. As they conquered lands and kingdoms, their accepted criterion of beauty became a norm. The public looked up to the fair skinned kings and queens associating white complexion with royalty.
In the late 15th century, Europeans began landing on the Indian coast. They landed as merchants but by the 18th century, they had dislodged local kings and had started ruling the country. The stigma of dark skin was further buttressed during this period and has continuously worsened since then. Being fair-skinned meant that the British lord would not turn away from looking at your face, or you might get a menial job under him for survival. By the time India became independent of the British (1947) being fair-skinned was increasingly in demand even among Indians.
One would have thought that Indians might have done away with the fair skin fetish with the British gone, but not unsurprisingly, it stuck. Even after independence, the desirability of fair skin did not diminish. Women were encouraged to get fairer skins by applying lotions, balms, creams, and untested potions. Such is India’s obsession with fair skin that even today, white foreign tourists are treated with reverence and are fawned upon while the black tourists do not get a similar treatment.
Fairness Creams — Supplying the Demand
The fairness cream market in India is greater than Rs 5000 Crore (that is 5 with 10 zeroes) and Fair & Lovely is the market leader with more than 70% market share.
Fair & Lovely, a fairness cream by Hindustan Unilever (HUL), was introduced in 1975, to cash in on women’s obsession with fair skin. Countless women have since been religiously using the cream to turn their skin shades lighter.
The advertisements for the products ranged from women turning into success overnight after they use the cream to lighten their skin tone to dark skinned women suffering from underconfidence suddenly getting a boost of confidence as they apply the product and became whiter than milk.
Fair & Lovely was so committed to making you fairer, that the cream came with a shade card where you could track your skin lightening progress. For 200 Rs (less than 3$) you could have your shot on fairness.
HUL also launched a fairness cream aimed at men called Fair & Handsome a while ago. Suddenly men who probably never thought that they need to become fair were queuing up to buy the cream. They wanted to become fair to woo their white skinned beauty, or simply improve their marriage prospects in an arranged marriage setup.
A Battle Not Won
HUL has been under intense pressure from various social groups for the last few years to change the name or remove the product. The groups argued that these creams propagate the color stereotype and make women feel ashamed of their existing skin tone by pushing them to change it.
HUL finally decided to rename Fair & Lovely as Glow & Lovely in 2020. It will also replace the word Fair with Glow and remove usage of words like skin lightening and fairness. Activists rejoiced at the behemoth taking attention and trying to normalise darker skin tones in the country. But this was a battle that was actually won by the marketing team of HUL.
In the Indian fairness — beauty context, Glow is a euphemism. It is similar to saying dark-skinned without saying black/brown. HUL will continue marketing the same promise of lightening the skin tone, albeit under the name of ‘radiating’ and ‘glowing skin’, and countless women would still be buying and applying them with the same expectations.
Even though HUL might have taken this symbolic step, several other companies will still keep marketing their products while reinforcing skin tone stereotypes.
Indian men and women today need to start being comfortable with their skin tones. Most of all, they need to stop chiding their friends, kids, cousins, strangers for dark skin. Media showing real skin tone rather than the airbrushed anchors, actors, movie stars, magazine covers could be the next big step. Men and women need to be made aware of the traps, cosmetic companies build by creating and feeding our insecurities.
Skin Tone Shaming is a real thing in India and it needs to be fought against and stopped. Right Now.
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