Our obsession
with fairness goes beyond desiring a brighter visage or a whiter
vagina. Can a social media campaign change this 'colour' bias?
A not-so-new Shah Rukh Khan
advertisement for Emami Fair and Handsome fairness cream for men is
making ripples throughout social media. Not in terms of sales,
though. A fledgling community on Facebook called “Dark is
Beautiful” is petitioning on change.org to have the advert removed.
The community claims the advertisement is discriminatory and racist,
that Shah Rukh Khan (or SRK as he is better known) should not use his
star appeal to endorse colour bias.
The
Dark is Beautiful campaign also has actor/activist Nandita Das as the
face of several messages that state: “Stay Unfair, Stay Beautiful'.
The message has slowly been picked up by various media. Ms Das has
been interviewed as condemning this fixation with fairness that has
permeated across India. She said, “...in the course of my social
work, I once visited a
remote village in Orissa that didn’t have enough food to eat, but
had expired Fair and Lovely tubes”. Ms Das's comments have been
reported across several media forums. There
have been debates on Indians and our obsession with attaining fairer
skin. And there has been a positive feedback for the campain itself.
The Dark is Beautiful Facebook community has grown from 3,200 'likes'
on July 23, to over 20,799 'likes' on Sep 30.
The community itself
has existed on FB since October 2012, but it is only now that it's
message is resonating with other FB users.
So
does all this mean Indians are now going to stop buying and using
fairness creams? Not really. For one thing, the fairness cream makers
are also on social media and use these forums to reach out to more
potential customers. Every
beauty giant worth it's name has not just an iconic celebrity
fronting it's campaign, but also a user-friendly Facebook page and
many 'apps' (applications) to test customers' 'fairness quotient'.
For instance, Fair & Lovely (from Hindustan Unilever or HUL) has
a 'Fairness Expert' app you can sign up for. The Fair & Lovely
page itself is very popular, with over 87,348 'likes'. Another example--Garnier Light India (owned by beauty giant
L'oreal Paris) has varous apps—there's one titled 'Reveal Garnier
Light's Change' where users are asked to click and “unlock the
secret to complete fairness”.
Of course it is heartening that the Dark is Beautiful page is gaining in popularity. But is that more of an example of what a little publicity can achieve? There's another community on Facebook that calls itself 'Anti Whitening', it talks of how fairness products ruin your skin and your self-esteem. That page has 789
'likes' (on Sep. 30). Seems it's message is not really being heard. Or
'liked'.
In too deep?
Perhaps that is
because our obsession with fairness creams is so much more than skin
deep. And perhaps this collective colour consciousness requires more
than a social media campaign, it needs a change within our minds and
hearts as well. Just last year,
there was a similar media firestorm over an intimate wash that
claimed to whiten the genital area. Mumbai-based Midas Care
Pharmaceuticals launched a new intimate wash Clean & Dry Intimate
Wash in August 2012. The response was immediate and viral—social
media was in uproar, there were furious debates condemning and yes,
ridiculing our craze for fairness. The advertisement itself was
vilified. There was much soul searching.
The company and more
important, the new product, Clean & Dry Intimate Wash, naturally
enough, benefited enormously from all the publcity. Women who had
never heard of the wash started buying the product. The wash started
selling well. And continues to sell well. In fact, the company now has an updated and improved the packaging and still advertises on national television (the new adverts do not carry any reference to whitening, per se). When I conducted a
random survey of chemist's shops in the Bangalore Cantonment area,
pharmacists told me the wash “is a fast-moving product”. Which
could well be true. A little chemists' shop near Bangalore East
railway station sells at least 15 units every month.
Midas Care confirmed
this when I contacted them. Poonam, a company spokesman admitted that
the wash is doing well. “We sell between 40,000 and 50,000 units
every month, across India,” she said. She also told me that she
uses it herself. “Not for fairness, but for hygiene purposes,”
she added.
The
irony is that despite all the furious backlash and the fast-selling,
this intimate
wash may not really do what it claims to. While researching the
product, I came across an article by dermatologist Dr Hanan Taha, who
does product reviews for the international beauty website
futurederm.com
Dr Taha is outraged by the product and its advertisement. And in her
review of whether the ingredients in the wash will actually help in
'whitening', she writes, “...niacinamide seems to be the only
ingredient that would work towards that goal, but ...its
concentration might not be high enough, I have my doubts that any
whitening can be achieved.” In the same article, she goes on to
warn women against using any product that promises fairness in the
vaginal region. “The area is sensitive and prone to irritation,”
Dr Taha cautioned, in her product review.
Whitening
or bleaching, take your pick
What message do we take away from the tale of these two campaigns?
That despite everything, despite all the negative press, the desire
to become fairer is overarching. The Dark is Beautiful campaign urges
us to embrace beauty without bias, to be “colour blind” as it
were. But the problem is we continue to want and use products to
whiten our face, bodies, armpits and yes, our vaginas. In fact, in
the months following the launch of the Midas Care product, other
intimate washes have also been launched in India. The advertisements
are classier of course, but the intent is the same, whiter skin, down
there. Moreover, it seems there are other geographical users for
these products now. In September 2012, Lactacyd
White Intimate,
an intimate wash was launched in Thailand. It claims to make the
skin in the genital region “bright and translucent”, according to
a report in The Guardian.
That
is not all. Women who feel the washes don't work, have another
option—vaginal bleaching. In January, while reporting on beauty
trends writer Natalie K Bell, Editor at www.futurederm.com
said anal bleaching “is also a hot, new procedure”. Here too,
Indians lead the way, she noted. “The vaginal bleaching trend began
in India and parts of Eastern Asia, where there has historically been
a desire for fairer skin. But now, as women look for the perfect
shade, they’re turning to products that will bleach them. The
ingredients they’re using likely contain kojic acid or
hydroquinone, which are generally the same ingredients used in
lightening creams anywhere else on the body. Both work by inhibiting
tyrosinase, an enzyme responsible for melanin production,” said
Bell.
An
unfair, unlovely world
If a girl or woman
buys and uses a fairness product, she, of course, has every right to
do so. But why does she feel compelled to buy one in the first place?
Ask Lizbeth James. No, she has not bought an intimate wash nor does
she plan to do so. But she succumbed last year and picked up a
fairness cream. That was after she met her (then) boyfriend's mother.
When
Lizbeth met Cherian (name changed)'s mother for the first time, she was
nervous but hopeful. She and Cherian Thomas had been dating for four
years, since they were colleagues at an ad agency in Bangalore. Now,
they were ready for marriage. But his mother, a retired school
headmistress in Kerala, did not consent.
Lizbeth and Cherian
are both from the same community, but for his mother, what seemed
more important than the couple's happiness was Lizbeth's complexion.
“She told me my dark skin colour showed my loose character, she
implied I had led her son astray,” Lizbeth told me, still trembling
inside from that fateful meeting. She went into a mild depression for
weeks after that encounter with her (soon-to-be ex) boyfriend's
mother.
Lizbeth is a
statusque 5' 6”, and an accomplished Bharatanatyam/comtemporary
dancer. An MBA-holder she was previously a highly paid team leader
for a global education behemoth in Bangalore. Now, she runs her own
contemporary dance company and juggles that with being the head of
strategy and marketing at a young, upcoming advertising agency. She
is also a dear friend of mine. But for Cherian's mother, her
accompishments did not matter. She chose to reject this young woman
on the basis of her flawless, mocha-coloured skin. What is more
ironic is that Cherian himself is hardly the epitome of “fair and
handsome” as SRK pronounces in his new advertisement. Cherian is of
a nutbrown skin tone himself. But for his mother that made no
difference. Only a fair bride will do for her son.
Tellingly
enough, while Cherian continued to declare undying love for his
girlfriend, he chose not to go against his mother's wishes. Instead,
he meekly acquiesced
with his parent's plans for an arranged marriage and even went to
'see' a girl, one presumably deemed fair enough to be acceptable as
his wife.
When
an
educated former school head mistress can judge (and find wanting) a
talented dark-skinned young woman, is it
surprising that fairness creams continue to sell well?
My friend Lizbeth, an extrovert, became withdrawn and plagued by
self-doubt. So much so that she started applying a cream to lighten
her flawless complextion. But no, Cherian is not part of her life
anymore.
The 'shade card'
in our heads
Lizbeth's experience
is not all that uncommon really. Radhika V, another dear friend, went
through similar soul-searching, on her wedding day in January this
year.
Radhika is a petite,
wheatish-complexioned 29-year-old. On her wedding day, she was
resplendent in fuchsia silk standing beside her new husband receiving
presents and wishes from their guests. Then a family friend, a mother
of two daughters, came up to the new bride and congratulated her.
“She told me I must count my blessings for netting such a
fairskinned husband”, Radhika told me later. Radhika is a graduate
of the London School of Economics (LSE), she speaks fluent French,
she has translated a French science book into English. Her father is
a former high ranking Naval official and her mother, a former
journalist. But neither her LSE degree nor her impeccable pedigree
prepared her for her well wisher's unfair comments. “The woman went
on to tell me she had expected me marry to someone like me—short
and dark. I was dumbfounded, to be honest. Later, I thought of many
smart retorts but at that precise moment, I couldn't think of
anything to tell that woman,” the new bride said, still fuming.
As a dark-skinned
woman myself and mother to a fair-skinned little boy, I empathise
entirely with both Lizbeth and Radhika. I am a Malayalee and my genes
prove it—curly hair and coffee-coloured skin is something I
inherited from my father. My husband is a Hoysala Karnataka Brahmin
and he has his mother's extremely fair skin. When we got married 12
years ago, we were frequently told, in jest of course, that we are
proof of how “opposites attract”. Because we really are totally
different, poles apart, both in skin colour and height-wise--my
husband is 6' 2” tall, I am 5' 1” . At one of the first family
functions we attended together, one of his relatives told my husband
graciously: “Swalpa kappu, aadhare channagidale”(transliteration:
she is black but beautiful, anyway). Only my husband's glare told the
tactless man that he had not paid me a compliment, but had committed
a faux pas.
I have never heard
such comments to my face, let me be honest. But in my heart, I
sometimes wonder why such a fair man as my husband chose to marry a
dark skinned girl. Perhaps nature has a way of balancing everything
out, including our insecurities. Our four-and-a-half-year-old son is
a beautiful mixture of our combined hues—he has honey gold skin. In
truth, I am glad he is not as dark skinned as I am. So he will not
experience the insecurities and agonies I went through, growing up.
Whitewashing our
brains
Why do I, an
educated woman and a journalist (ergo, assumed to be an objective
observer of society!) think this way? I really cannot help it. Given
that every day, every waking moment, like everybody else, I too am
bombarded by advertisements (in newspapers, on the television, on
hoardings, everwhere I look, really) that talk about how fairness is
crucial to success in life and love—to land that dream job, find a
life partner, to feel beautiful, inside and out.
Today, fairness is
considered an achievement everyone should and must aspire to. Just
the names of the brands are an indication of an achievable an
aspiration—Fair & Lovely, Fairever, White Perfect, Perfect
Radiance, White Glow, Healthy White, Natural White, Blanc Expert
(blanc is white in French), Fine Fairness, Pearl Perfect. Every brand
sends out a very clear message, that 'white'ness is the beauty ideal
to possess. Everything else, any other shade, falls short. To make
matters simple, today there are brands to suit every budget—from Rs
5 sachets to luxury buys that can break the bank.
No, I do not use
fairness creams. But I understand my friend Lizbeth for finally
picking up a fairness product. I also applauded the loudest when she
broke it off with the boyfriend who could not stand up for her. As
for Radhika's much fairer husband Avinash, he is aghast at what their
wedding guest told his wife. “I fell in love with her, because of
the person she is, not because of her skin colour. Her complexion is
immaterial,” he stressed. The problem is, not many people think
that way.
Make me fairer,
doctor
Ask Dr Mukta
Sachdev. That she has many clients is entirely because of how good
the Bangalore-based dermatologist is. She has a thriving business.
She also sees many people, men and women, who want to become fairer.
“Of every 100 patients I see, at least 20 to 30 (both men and
women), seek fairer skin,” she told me. This obsession is extremely
unhealthy and can actually harm, the doctor said. Adolscents who are
14 or 15 years of age come to her, on their own. That is natural
given the enormous peer pressure they face. What she finds more
worrying is how parents are becoming fixated on achieving lighter,
brighter skin tones for their daughters. “Once a couple brought
their seven-year-old to me. I refused to treat her. They were worried
because their own relatives had been castigating them over her dark
skin colour. The child, meanwhile, was too young to undersand what
the fuss was all about,” said the dermatologist.
Dr Sachdev is
herself dusky. She understands what young people, specially young
women, go through when they are constantly told that to be fair is
the ideal. She believes that human nature comes into play here.
“Young people (and their parents) are affected by what family
members, relatives and friends say about their looks,” she pointed
out. So, girls seeking to boost their marital prospects continue to
go to her for they are told again and again that dark skin is a
disadvantage.
Dr
Sachdev tries to make her patients understand that while she can
enhance the complexion and correct unevenness of skin tone, she
cannot change or lighten their skin colour. “In
fact, I always tell them to be confident, literally, in their own
skin. In fact, I tell them to look at me, my skin colour,”
said
the dermatolgist, a smile lighting up her face. But to no avail.
Girls of marriageable age still flock to her. As do adolescents.
The doctor now
believes she must become a counsellor to her patients. “I now plan
to do a course in psychology so I can make them understand that the
colour of their skin does not determine their destiny,” said the
dermatologist. She is not alone in saying that this
colour-consciousness can harm. Another dermatologist, Dr Belinda Vaz,
a Mumbai-based dermatologist, wrote on the 'Dark is Beautiful'
Facebook page that she “sees many young people traumatised because
of their skin color. They are often depressed, have low self esteem,
lack confidence and are willing to use unsafe remedies just to look a
shade lighter,” Dr Vaz said. Referring to fairness cream
advertisements on telelvision in general, and specifically, to the
new SRK advertisement for 'Fair and Handsome', Dr Vaz added: “Such
Ads (sic) and products should be banned!”
Dark and
depressed
No matter what
doctors like Dr Sachdev or Dr Vaz tell their patients, there is
always this striving to achieve “lighter, whiter, brighter” skin
colour (as one advertisement tagline urges us to do). And it can
sometimes have tragic consequences. Last year, The Times of India
reported that depression over their looks had led young women living
in the outskirts of Bangalore, to even attempt suicide: One girl
consumed pesticide, another poured kerosene on her face. Both
recovered and were being counselled, the newspaper report said.
Dr G P Gururaj, a
Bangalore-based psychiatrist who treated one of the suicidal girls,
told me that young people could be resorting to such extreme measures
because there is now intense focus on physical attributes. “In
rural areas, there is also this crude way of referring to a person by
his or her skin colour or size—calling a boy 'kariya' or 'dumma'
(literally, “darkie” or “fatso”), for example. That can
really affect the person at the receiving end,” he explained.
That words can do
great harm is something Lizbeth, Radhika, I, myself and many other
dark-skinned women, know very well. That we continue to remain sane
and successful is mainly because of the strength and love we receive
from our loved ones.
A long, fair
tradition
But how did we as a
nation get to this? To this blitzkrieg of advertising urging us to
peel away our diffidence, to unlock our confidence and reveal our
fair, glowing selves? To blindly follow what the fairness cream
advertisements urge us to do? To go back to the beginning, we have to
go back to 1975--when Hindustan Lever (now HUL) launched Fair &
Lovely fairness cream. On the company website, HUL claims it is the
world's first fairness cream and is now also the world's largest
selling fairness cream selling in over 30 countries. “Today, 250
million consumers across the globe strongly connect with Fair &
Lovely as a brand that stands for the belief that 'beauty that
empowers a woman to change her destiny',” the company states on its
website. HUL claims it's skin-lightening technology is “the best in
the world”, but do fairness creams really work?
According to Dr
Kiran Lohia, dermatologist and founder of New Delhi-based Cosmedic
Skin Solutions, most fairness creams do not do what they claim to.
She writes on healthIndia.com (a health and beauty news website):
“fairness creams are supposed to change the natural colour of your
skin to a lighter version of it. In fact, one’s skin colour is
genetically determined, and is decided through the number, size and
distribution of melanosomes, or sacs containing melanin or pigment,
scattered in the top layer of the skin.” Darker skin types, she
said, have more melanin, lighter skins have less. “An analysis of
the three most popular fairness creams in India revealed that only
around 5-10% of the ingredients actually help in promoting fairness.
Furthermore, although these ingredients, such as niacinamide and
ascorbyl glucosidase, have some purported clinical efficacy at
reducing melanin synthesis, there have been no studies to clinically
prove their effect. The remaining ingredients actually act by
moisturising and softening the skin, or by protecting against UV
exposure.” Basically, the ingredients make the skin look slightly
brighter, she said, in the article.
The
doctor goes on to warn that pigmentation is a concern in India, given
our exposure to harsh sunlight. “Hydroquinone, Alpha-Arbutin,
Vitamin A derivatives and Alpha-Hydroxy Acids” work to remove
pigmentation, she said, However, “hydroquinone, a potent melanin
synthesis inhibitor, is used in concentrations
of 2% over the counter, and 4% by prescription in combination with
other ingredients. Unfortunately, it has many side effects, including
redness, irritation and the risk of ochronosis, or paradoxical
darkening of the area where it is being used. Furthermore, it has
recently been shown to cause leukemia or blood cancer in animals,
leading to it being banned in the European Union,” she added.
User, harm
thyself, knowingly?
So basically, when a
girl or woman uses a fairness cream, she is applying potentially very
harmful substances to her skin. More than once, every day. Because
all makers of fairness products urge users to use the prodcuts every
day, or even twice daily for “best results”. In fact, many women
have different brightening day creams and night creams which they
then use daily. What is astonishing here is not that there is enough
research out there to show how potentially dangerous fairness creams
can be. What is astounding is that we continue to use them. Why? Sudha
Sitaraman, sociologist and womens' studies specialist said it is all
due to a self-reinforcing cycle. “Fairness
creams now determine how we look and we aspire to look that way
because these creams are part of a heirarchisation of what
constitutes beauty. We feel inadequate if we are not made in that
image, so we buy (a fairness cream) and apply, it becomes a
self-reinforcing cycle. But in the long run, it doesn't help”. That
stars—actors and actresses—endorse these products makes all the
difference, she said. “We identify ourselves with these
heroes/heroines, take on their habits, and yes, pick up the creams
they are shown as using,” added Sitaraman.
So children are
fair game too?
It is one thing to
get actors and have them urge adults to use fairness creams, but how
ethical is it to target young children? Today fairness cream
advertisements are not restricted to the 'grown-up' television
channels but are also frequently aired on childrens' channels too. I
know because my son is a POGO fan. Or he used to be. Till he asked me
to buy him a “fairness sachet” that came free with a popular
brand of toothpaste. He saw the advertisement during a break in his
favourite television show featuring his hero-Chota Bheem.
My
son has no idea what a fairness cream is. Though he has seen
advertisements for White Tone 'instant' fairness powder that air
during Chota Bheem episodes. When he asked me to get him the fairness
cream sachet just because it came free with a toothpaste, I had to
act. First I banned television, instead, my husband and I read more
to our son. Then, I lodged an online complaint with the Advertising
Standards Council of India (ASCI) in the last week of June this year.
In the complaint, I explained my reasons for seeking a ban on
fairness creams products on childrens' channels: that a fairness
cream meant for adults should not be aired on a childrens' channel,
that it can potentially skew the childrens' thinking and make them
feel that fair skin is something they too need to possess. This
thinking could make them lack self-confidence in later years, I said,
in the complaint.
In July, I got a
response from ASCI. I reproduce it in full below in bold font (Note: the capitalisation
is theirs, not mine):
“Your
Complaint regarding White tone face powder with the tracking code
613f319eea27 has been processed with Final Complaint Number C.5057.
You can check the status of your complaint on track complaint page.
Thank
you for having referred this complaint to us. The complaint was
considered by the Consumer Complaints Council (CCC) at their meeting.
As per their decision, the complaint HAS NOT BEEN UPHELD.
The CCC viewed the TVC and concluded that the messages conveyed in
the TVC were not objectionable. Also, the CCC did not consider that
the ad should be restricted to Adult channels only. The complaint was
NOT UPHELD.
Assuring
you of our services in the pursuit of Self-Regulation in
Advertising.”
So, according to
ASCI, it is perfectly legal and ethical to show fairness cream
advertisements on childrens' channels. Never mind the potentially
harmful consequences of repeatedly exposing young minds to
advertisements that show what lengths adults go through to achieve
fairer skin. Never mind what a little girl or boy will think when
she/he sees her mother (or father) applying a fairness cream, day
after day, twice a day, for best results.
But
who cares, really? Does SRK care that the brand he endorses comes
from a long tradition of products that feed off our insecurities?
These products are cleverly marketed to make us believe that by using
a fairness cream, we are “empowering” ourselves. Who are we
kidding? 'Dark is Beautiful' is a truly powerful campaign and it
deserves to be in the limelight.
But will it make us
embrace our true colours? Or for that matter, make each of us throw
away that tube—of fairness cream?
_____________________________
(While this is an
entirely original piece, parts of this article were published in Talk
magazine in February 2013)
Comments