Neither ‘Fair’ nor ‘Lovely’: Commercial Exploitation of Colour Bias

Abstract

The media is powerful enough to form notions, change opinions, bring in transformation or reinforce the status quo in different areas of our lives. Advertising, very crucial to media’s projection of people, is a major factor in deciding what we buy or we do not. However advertising does not just influence the buying behaviour, it also offers great insights into the socio-cultural and economic life of communities than a whole shelf of conventional histories. Advertising is undoubtedly unmatched as a window on the contemporary society. A closer examination reveals the ideology underlying these advertisements. While some advertisements are progressive, a majority of them reinforce stereotypes of gender, class, race and sexuality.

This paper explores the fairness cream advertisements like Fair and Lovely, Fairever Mantra, Fair and Handsome etc. These advertisements exploit the preference for a lighter skin tone, long embedded within the Indian psyche. Initial advertisers resorted to stereotypical representations of women as consumers of skin bleaching products. With the launch of Fair & Handsome, exclusively for men, there was a revolution that breaks taboos, and permits men to openly acknowledge their interest in personal care. At the same time, this also opens up a potentially huge consumer market for the advertised brand. This paper examines whiteness as a normative construct. Simultaneously it also examines the shifting societal dynamics. The paper concludes that these advertisements reveal a growing consciousness of an orientation in the education of girls and women that perpetuates sexism and within-culture racism.