For centuries Indian women have been raised to believe that fairness is beauty, and this has given rise to a vast and ever-growing skin-whitening industry – which is now encouraging women to bleach far beyond the traditional seen face and hands. (Fair, 2012)
Fair and Lovely is one of those new companies exporting the skin whitening idea. Fair and Lovely has packaging that shows a dark-skinned unhappy woman morphing into a light-skinned smiling one, once focused its advertising on the problems a dark-skinned woman might face finding romance. In a sign of the times, the company's ads now show lighter skin conferring a different advantage: helping a woman land a job normally held by men, like announcer at cricket matches. "Fair and Lovely: The Power of Beauty," is the tagline on the company's newest ad. However this particular company has been under heavy criticism, mainly because of its market dominance its ads and the parent company's image. Unilever, the company who owns Fair and Lovely, also makes Dove products "Real Beauty" whose campaign encourages women in the United States and Europe to embrace the way they look.
Even though the company has been heavily scrutinized, millions of products like this are advertised to and bought by women everyday, in 2013 it was estimated that 60-65% of women in India use a skin whitening product everyday.
Fair - A Documentary on Skin Whitening in India
No comments:
Post a Comment