Dark is beautiful: Hit products finally abandon ‘fairness’ label

Many creams and lotions are dropping ‘fair’ and ‘light’ from their names. How far will that go in ridding India of its colour prejudice?

Late last week, Hindustan Unilever announced its decision to drop ‘Fair’ from the name of its skin-whitening cream Fair & Lovely.

The decision, said to be aimed at “a more diverse portrayal of beauty”, came soon after Johnson & Johnson announced it would no longer produce or sell its Neutrogena Fine Fairness and Clean & Clear Fairness lines.

The company said it was never its intention to project white as a better skin tone, and said, “Healthy skin is beautiful skin.”

French cosmetics giant L’Oréal has also announced it would drop words such as white/whitening, fair/fairness, light/lightening from all its skincare products.

Skin prejudice

Many in India are saying the decision was long overdue, and comes after long years of promoting and reinforcing skin prejudice.

Illustrator Sushmita Mukherjee was made aware of her skin colour from a very young age.

“My mother was a ‘fair’ woman, and that led to a lot of relatives drawing comparisons. It was always rude and cruel,” she says.

When she moved from Bengaluru to Ambala, the bullying intensified.

“Down South, there were many who looked like me, but when I moved to the North I was made fun of ruthlessly in school,” she says.

On many occasions, she was asked to move away from lighter-skinned cousins when photos were taken. At 11, she bought a tube of Fair and Lovely.

“I applied it in secret, desperately hoping it would make me fair and the bullying would stop,” she says.

As she grew older, she learned to love her skin but it wasn’t easy.

“You are being told by near and dear ones that you’d be prettier if you were just two shades lighter and your own family scrubs your skin with odd concoctions to make you fairer,” she says.

Seen as exotic

Things were different for Mariette Valsan. The actor-model-activist grew up in Delhi and seeing women in positions of power helped her understand that accomplishment was more important than looks. As a model and actor, she was always viewed as exotic. “It’s odd to be called that in your own country,” she says.

She has had to fight with makeup artists to maintain her skin tone. “I was told that I’d look better if I were fairer, or that the client prefers a ‘brighter’ skin tone,” she says. In many cases, her skin tone was changed in post-production. “I now try to work with brands that respect my natural skin,” she says.

India’s fixation

The market size of the fairness cream industry is pegged at around Rs 50 billion.

India is the largest market for fairness products, with many celebrities endorsing them.

In 2014, the Advertising Standards Council of India cried halt to ads depicting dark-skinned people as disadvantaged, but many campaigns continued to portray fair skin as life-changing.

Ironically, the move to drop ‘fairness’ from ‘Fair & Lovely’ came from the ‘Black lives matter’ movement in the USA, and not in response to anti-colourism campaigns within India.

Neither Unilever nor L’Oreal has announced a change in the formulation of their products, which means their supposed fairness-enhancing attributes will stay put.

Unilever says its emphasis will shift from ‘fairness’ to ‘glow’, another term used to describe a lighter skin tone.

Mariette says the brands have reaped benefits from systemic racism and colourism.

“Real change will come when a brand puts its money where its mouth is, and hires people to dismantle colourism. Only then it will be more than just a ‘cosmetic” change,” she says. Sushmita says prejudice needs to be addressed at home, too. “The ones who bullied me the most were children. Their unlearning has to begin at home,” she says.

Caste implications

India’s obsession with fairness is deeply rooted in its caste system. “The Sanskrit name of caste is ‘varna’. The notions of ‘savarna’ and ‘avarna’, the former suggesting ‘of colour’ and the latter ‘lack of’ are by their very nature racist,” says Etienne Rassendren, professor of English, St Joseph’s College (Autonomous).

This understanding has trickled down to popular culture where dark skinned people are portrayed as funny, villainous or diseased and deformed, he says.