India debates whether fair skin is more beautiful - 'racist' skin cream ads - Merged

[mAd_ScIeNtIsT]

I was debating whether this belongs in General, World Affairs, or Culture, and decided for culture in the end.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/3089495.stm

A recent ban on a television advertisement for a skin-lightening cream has fuelled a debate in India over why fairer skin should be considered more beautiful.
While India has seen a phenomenal growth in the number of skin-lightening products, women's groups in the country claim recent adverts are insulting, as they equate fairer skin with beauty and success.

One advert - for a product named Fair And Lovely - has now been taken off the air.

"It's a highly racist campaign," Brinda Karat, general secretary of the All India Democratic Women's Association, told BBC World Service's Everywoman programme.

"It equates fairness with beauty."

The advert was known as "the air hostess ad".

It showed a young, dark-skinned girl's father lamenting he had no son to provide for him, as his daughter's salary was not high enough - the suggestion being that she could neither get a better job or get married because of her dark skin.

[rvikz]

for indian sun you need dark skin to survive it is natural selection by god.

[ShiNoO]

I remember seeing a documentary a while back on this very same topic. They also showed some of the adds and I think the 'air-hostess'ad was one of them. ANyway, I agree, some of these ads are way over the top.

Do those creams actually make u fairer? That's what I've always wondered about

[punjabi kuri !!!]

women's groups in the country claim recent adverts are insulting, as they equate fairer skin with beauty and success.

being quite dark myself,i agree. i was quite sick of all the fair & lovely adds in pakistan.

[Furqan]

India debates 'racist' skin cream ads

India debates 'racist' skin cream ads


Parliament has now banned one of the adverts
A recent row over a television advertisement for a skin-lightening cream has fuelled a debate in India over why fairer skin should be considered more beautiful.
While India has seen a phenomenal growth in the number of skin-lightening products, women's groups in the country claim recent adverts are insulting, as they equate fairer skin with beauty and success.

One advert - for a product named Fair And Lovely - has now been taken off the air.

"It's a highly racist campaign," Brinda Karat, general secretary of the All India Democratic Women's Association, told BBC World Service's Everywoman programme.

"It equates fairness with beauty."

Cultural basis

The advert was known as "the air hostess ad".

It showed a young, dark-skinned girl's father lamenting he had no son to provide for him, as his daughter's salary was not high enough - the suggestion being that she could neither get a better job or get married because of her dark skin.


Many of India's models are light-skinned
The girl then uses the cream, becomes fairer, and gets a better-paid job as an air hostess - and makes her father happy.

"Of course, there is a cultural base in India for this kind of market. [Fair And Lovely are] taking advantage of that and exploiting that very backward understanding," Ms Karat said.

[ahmadjee]

At least there is a debate, in Pakistan 'gori' skin rules, there is no debate, no ethical dilemma, no thought process.

[mAd_ScIeNtIsT]

^^

Exactly. The debate on this issue is one thing that I hope will manage to cross the border....

[Mehnaz]

All the beauty salons in Pakistan that specialise in skin bleaching to make women fair will still have a thriving business even IF this debate ever does cross the border.

I think they need to start putting more average women (who don't look european) in Pakistani dramas so that the public can see that not everyone has to be 'fair' to be considered beautiful and get ahead in life.

[Asif]

hey ppl chill out and have some nimboo paani!

i don't think it is just a pakistani phenomenon or an indian phenomenon...throughout history fair skin has been equated with beauty--even in africa, light skinned africans are considered more attractive! it's a universal phenomenon...[and i mean even before goray colonised us]

pakistanis on the whole do tend to be fairer than indians anyway...
having said the above it is not JUST fair skin either...all of the models in pakistani ads/tv dramas tend to have highly chiselled feautures anyway and would be considered beautiful by most ppl.

i remember when i was doing my master's degree we had to do some image processing labs and on my computer at that time as a background i had a photo of zeba bakhtiyaar. i remember all the guys in my class went mad over her and almost all of them used her image to do the image analysis on!! none of them were desi either...most of them were greeks and cypriots and a few were iranians...

go figure...

these type of features: light skin, big eyes, chiselled cheekbones, baareek (fine) nose are considered attractive everywhere EVEN if you are saanwali and have these looks ppl will go nuts over you.

[RajputFury]

I doubt that this debate will change social norms. Castteism is illegal in India and it hasnt been destroyed as a cultural institution.

We have a family friend (Pakistani) who is married to a mixed race african woman...Everyone in the local community has ostracized them, while it may be due to the cross cultural marriage, yet I distinctly remembered an aunty saying "haye bechara..kisse gori se shaadi kar leyta." Know the sad part? This aunty is darker than the wife of the friend

If you want to blame people...Blame the aunties and the mothers of sons..who push these social standards in the community.

[Mehnaz]

Originally posted by RajputFury:
If you want to blame people...Blame the aunties and the mothers of sons..who push these social standards in the community.

Very true. Women are their own worst enemies. It's women who perpetuate this kind of discrimination cause they are insecure about their own looks.

[rvikz]

most of the models in tv ads dont look like average indian and they dont reflect the regular people. even us tv you see more black people
than indian tv.

[Faisal]

Originally posted by Asif:
even in africa, light skinned africans are considered more attractive!

I don't think this is necessarily true. Based on what I have been told by some Africans, in Africa, for the most part, the darker the better (pure blood and all). I think it is cultural. People in Pakistan and India, and I am sure many other places, consider whiter skin as better.

[Umer]

It's like "door kai dhol suhaane".

South Asians spend thousands of Rupees for those whitening creams to look fair, while Westerners spend thousands of Euros/dollars for sun studios to look brown.

[Nadia_H]

hm. Interesting discussion.

We have a family friend (Pakistani) who is married to a mixed race african woman...Everyone in the local community has ostracized them, while it may be due to the cross cultural marriage, yet I distinctly remembered an aunty saying "haye bechara..kisse gori se shaadi kar leyta." Know the sad part? This aunty is darker than the wife of the friend

This sort of perspective makes me extremely angry and sad. "Bechara" keouN bana? Maybe that African lady is more pious and a better Muslim than all of us, who knows? Maybe she has more taqwa than someone who's lighter-coloured. She could be ten times a better human being than me. Only Allah knows.

i agree with Mehnaz completely, sometimes it's we gals who are our own worst enemies. To a certain extent, we perpetuate this. Every Aunty wants the most gori laRki for their son. i have yet to hear any Muslim mother, whom i know personally, tell her daughter that her dark skin is beautiful in its own way. This type of stupidity occupies no position in Islam when even the first muezzin was a black man, appointed by none other than Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) himself.