NB: This blog entry was solicited by Dr. Alissa Trotz of the University of Toronto's Caribbean Studies Department for submission to the Stabroek Newspaper in Guyana, which carries an 'In the Diaspora' section. The publication date was August 26th, 2013.
KEY TOPICS: South Asia, skin lightening, marriage, race discrimination, Unilever
“Is she fair?” “Yes, she is.” An innocent exchange, one might think. But let me provide the social context: the topic is marriage, the inquirer a matchmaker and the respondent an Indian mother. Obviously pleased, the matchmaker nods emphatically and states, “Ok, good.”
Still an innocent line of inquiry?
Given that Guyana is home to a large Indian diaspora, I suspect Stabroek News readers have caught my drift: light skin is a highly valuable commodity on the South Asian marriage market (commercial terms deliberately used). In the above exchange, had the mother instead answered, “No, she isn’t,” any prospect of marriage would've been lost. What’s worse, the Indian mother would've accepted that the groom in question, of course, deserved a fair and lovely bride - what was she thinking?! (I shudder to think of the kind of criticism this mother would subject her daughter after a failed matchmaking attempt.) The underlying message for those of us who broadly identify as ‘South Asian’ is that access to particular social privileges and contracts, like marriage, increases for those of us with light skin. Granted, class is another marker of difference that factors into the "success" equation. So let me clarify, in this article I refer to the educated South Asian middle-class who, while not a homogenous group by any means, are seeking similar ends, like 'good' marriage prospects.
I'm a 30-something first generation Indian-Canadian. I was raised in Montreal by progressive, middle-class Punjabi Hindu parents. My primary job is public school teaching in Toronto but occasionally I venture abroad to ‘stretch myself,’ metaphorically speaking. Most recently, I taught at an elite international school in Dhaka, Bangladesh. While living there, I was exposed to a regular stream of “Fair & Lovely” television ads on regional networks that got right ‘under my skin.’ In spite of my own fair skin ‘status,’ I became angry. So, I openly acknowledge that as a result of forming strong views on the matter, the thoughts and opinions expressed here are biased.
"Fair and Lovely’s" parent company, Unilever, states on its website that
“key [to our success] remains anticipating the aspirations of our customers and consumers and then providing products, which meet their present and emerging needs.”
With “Fair & Lovely” creams, female customers can address their ‘need’ for convenient, cost-effective skin lighteners. For the males, there’s now a complementary product by Emami Ltd. that will produce similar results and it’s called, "Fair & Handsome." Becoming better looking today just couldn’t be any easier for middle class South Asians. The infallible Shah Rukh Khan (SRK) – who incidentally stars in print and t.v. campaigns for “Fair and Handsome” products - would seem to agree.
Regularly endorsed by Bollywood celebrities, like Asin and SRK, skin whitening products are promoted as the solution to your social problems. That’s right: you've got problems. But, from the comfort of your own bathroom, you can step into the skin you’ve always desired and utterly transform your life! That’s one loaded sales pitch; yet both Unilever and Emami operate from the premise that your dark skin is harming your chances of long-standing social success in most spheres, especially dating & marriage. The two companies hope that you agree.
Broadcast regularly on Bangladeshi and Indian television, "Fair & Lovely" commercials pitch specifically to the growing middle-class who can afford the luxury of cable television viewing. A category containing future brides and grooms who, no matter the GDP of their respective countries, still hold fairly retrograde social views. In a region where weddings are considered the penultimate experience and marriage the most enviable of social contracts, a "lovely" bride or "handsome" groom is an absolute must. If you’re brown, you’re all too aware of this dangerously shallow perception that the loveliest and most handsome are also the fairest. However, this doesn’t sound fair at all.
So 'race' doesn’t just headline North American newspapers and talk-radio programs, it’s a hot-button issue in South Asia too. Except in India and Bangladesh (similarly, I suspect, in other parts of the sub-continent) there’s no real race debate, just an age-old tradition of racial prejudice that's yet to become politicized. Issues related to caste, gendercide (i.e., the deliberate killing of female fetuses and/or newborns) child brides and dowry have long been political as much as social issues. As far as racial prejudice among the educated goes, not so much.
Undoubtedly, the region is overburdened with social problems, like the ones mentioned above along with illiteracy, urban poverty, ecological degradations, sadly, the list is endless. Where would intra-class racism fit in? Compared to the other problems, it seems rather trivial. To complicate matters, news media outlets have a vested interest in promoting Indian beauty "standards," like smooth, fair skin. We’re all too aware that today's corporations and television broadcasting companies are conveniently wedded to one another: Unilever PLC, Emami Ltd., Zee, Star, all are complicit in presenting a simplified version of our ever-complex world.
Now that I’ve left South Asia, ‘whitening’ is something I associate more with teeth than skin – it’s all about social context, isn't it? As for ‘dark skin’? Well, interestingly, a quick browse through Unilever Canada’s website would have you believe that ‘up here,’ women most desire sunkissed – or golden brown - skin all year round. Personally, I can vouch for the popularity of cosmetic bronzers; moreover, I’ve used them myself. I guess the company really does try to please its global customer base with the “right” products. Or, it’s less about the actual product and more about perpetrating a given society’s mainstream cultural values that serve to ‘commodify’ beauty and so make beauty products necessary. Well, that’s my opinion at least.
It’s no quip that "Fair & Lovely" ads got right ‘under my skin’ during my year-long stay in Bangladesh. As a teacher-activist, mainstream media’s propagation of race prejudice would obviously trouble me, while as a progressive Indo-Canadian female, I would be deeply offended by the concept of skin lightening for beautification purposes.
How'd we get to such an unenlightened point in our human development? Now that’s a loaded question that can only be treated superficially in this concluding paragraph. It’s important to begin by stating that our obsession with light anything has much to do with ideals of cleanliness and purity or, seen another way, of hygiene and morality: couplings that simply aren't natural. But, through various discourses, they evolved over time, crossing cultural and geographical boundaries. Finally, they rooted themselves in people's minds. From this point on, strong divisions emerged which facilitated obscene historical events. From the slave trade to the eugenics movement, ghettoes and camps to apartheid systems of government, in each of these instances, race as a social marker was used in ways that deliberately oppressed whole groups of people. We cannot divorce skin lightening (or skin bleaching as it's more commonly referred to in the Caribbean) from this wider context. In their own rather deliberate coupling of ‘fair and lovely’ and ‘fair and handsome,’ certain brands and their parent companies seem to be pursuing a similar agenda in their part of the world. Ironically, the way out of an oppressive social situation that they promise to provide, turns out to be the very problem.
KEY TOPICS: South Asia, skin lightening, marriage, race discrimination, Unilever
“Is she fair?” “Yes, she is.” An innocent exchange, one might think. But let me provide the social context: the topic is marriage, the inquirer a matchmaker and the respondent an Indian mother. Obviously pleased, the matchmaker nods emphatically and states, “Ok, good.”
Still an innocent line of inquiry?
Given that Guyana is home to a large Indian diaspora, I suspect Stabroek News readers have caught my drift: light skin is a highly valuable commodity on the South Asian marriage market (commercial terms deliberately used). In the above exchange, had the mother instead answered, “No, she isn’t,” any prospect of marriage would've been lost. What’s worse, the Indian mother would've accepted that the groom in question, of course, deserved a fair and lovely bride - what was she thinking?! (I shudder to think of the kind of criticism this mother would subject her daughter after a failed matchmaking attempt.) The underlying message for those of us who broadly identify as ‘South Asian’ is that access to particular social privileges and contracts, like marriage, increases for those of us with light skin. Granted, class is another marker of difference that factors into the "success" equation. So let me clarify, in this article I refer to the educated South Asian middle-class who, while not a homogenous group by any means, are seeking similar ends, like 'good' marriage prospects.
I'm a 30-something first generation Indian-Canadian. I was raised in Montreal by progressive, middle-class Punjabi Hindu parents. My primary job is public school teaching in Toronto but occasionally I venture abroad to ‘stretch myself,’ metaphorically speaking. Most recently, I taught at an elite international school in Dhaka, Bangladesh. While living there, I was exposed to a regular stream of “Fair & Lovely” television ads on regional networks that got right ‘under my skin.’ In spite of my own fair skin ‘status,’ I became angry. So, I openly acknowledge that as a result of forming strong views on the matter, the thoughts and opinions expressed here are biased.
"Fair and Lovely’s" parent company, Unilever, states on its website that
“key [to our success] remains anticipating the aspirations of our customers and consumers and then providing products, which meet their present and emerging needs.”
 |
| Fair & Lovely advertisement |
With “Fair & Lovely” creams, female customers can address their ‘need’ for convenient, cost-effective skin lighteners. For the males, there’s now a complementary product by Emami Ltd. that will produce similar results and it’s called, "Fair & Handsome." Becoming better looking today just couldn’t be any easier for middle class South Asians. The infallible Shah Rukh Khan (SRK) – who incidentally stars in print and t.v. campaigns for “Fair and Handsome” products - would seem to agree.
Regularly endorsed by Bollywood celebrities, like Asin and SRK, skin whitening products are promoted as the solution to your social problems. That’s right: you've got problems. But, from the comfort of your own bathroom, you can step into the skin you’ve always desired and utterly transform your life! That’s one loaded sales pitch; yet both Unilever and Emami operate from the premise that your dark skin is harming your chances of long-standing social success in most spheres, especially dating & marriage. The two companies hope that you agree.
Broadcast regularly on Bangladeshi and Indian television, "Fair & Lovely" commercials pitch specifically to the growing middle-class who can afford the luxury of cable television viewing. A category containing future brides and grooms who, no matter the GDP of their respective countries, still hold fairly retrograde social views. In a region where weddings are considered the penultimate experience and marriage the most enviable of social contracts, a "lovely" bride or "handsome" groom is an absolute must. If you’re brown, you’re all too aware of this dangerously shallow perception that the loveliest and most handsome are also the fairest. However, this doesn’t sound fair at all.
So 'race' doesn’t just headline North American newspapers and talk-radio programs, it’s a hot-button issue in South Asia too. Except in India and Bangladesh (similarly, I suspect, in other parts of the sub-continent) there’s no real race debate, just an age-old tradition of racial prejudice that's yet to become politicized. Issues related to caste, gendercide (i.e., the deliberate killing of female fetuses and/or newborns) child brides and dowry have long been political as much as social issues. As far as racial prejudice among the educated goes, not so much.
Undoubtedly, the region is overburdened with social problems, like the ones mentioned above along with illiteracy, urban poverty, ecological degradations, sadly, the list is endless. Where would intra-class racism fit in? Compared to the other problems, it seems rather trivial. To complicate matters, news media outlets have a vested interest in promoting Indian beauty "standards," like smooth, fair skin. We’re all too aware that today's corporations and television broadcasting companies are conveniently wedded to one another: Unilever PLC, Emami Ltd., Zee, Star, all are complicit in presenting a simplified version of our ever-complex world.
Now that I’ve left South Asia, ‘whitening’ is something I associate more with teeth than skin – it’s all about social context, isn't it? As for ‘dark skin’? Well, interestingly, a quick browse through Unilever Canada’s website would have you believe that ‘up here,’ women most desire sunkissed – or golden brown - skin all year round. Personally, I can vouch for the popularity of cosmetic bronzers; moreover, I’ve used them myself. I guess the company really does try to please its global customer base with the “right” products. Or, it’s less about the actual product and more about perpetrating a given society’s mainstream cultural values that serve to ‘commodify’ beauty and so make beauty products necessary. Well, that’s my opinion at least.
It’s no quip that "Fair & Lovely" ads got right ‘under my skin’ during my year-long stay in Bangladesh. As a teacher-activist, mainstream media’s propagation of race prejudice would obviously trouble me, while as a progressive Indo-Canadian female, I would be deeply offended by the concept of skin lightening for beautification purposes.
How'd we get to such an unenlightened point in our human development? Now that’s a loaded question that can only be treated superficially in this concluding paragraph. It’s important to begin by stating that our obsession with light anything has much to do with ideals of cleanliness and purity or, seen another way, of hygiene and morality: couplings that simply aren't natural. But, through various discourses, they evolved over time, crossing cultural and geographical boundaries. Finally, they rooted themselves in people's minds. From this point on, strong divisions emerged which facilitated obscene historical events. From the slave trade to the eugenics movement, ghettoes and camps to apartheid systems of government, in each of these instances, race as a social marker was used in ways that deliberately oppressed whole groups of people. We cannot divorce skin lightening (or skin bleaching as it's more commonly referred to in the Caribbean) from this wider context. In their own rather deliberate coupling of ‘fair and lovely’ and ‘fair and handsome,’ certain brands and their parent companies seem to be pursuing a similar agenda in their part of the world. Ironically, the way out of an oppressive social situation that they promise to provide, turns out to be the very problem.
