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A Letter to Indians Everywhere: Put away the Fair and Lovely (Singh)

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Colorism in Media

Light Skin Privilege

There is often a social phenomenon called the Light skin privilege that dominates south Asian countries like Indian and Myanmar and other parts of the world much more subtle. Light skin privilege is discrimination based on skin color, also known as colorism or shadeism, is a form of prejudice or discrimination, usually from members of the same race or culture but also within wider society, against dark skin individuals. Growing up in Yangon, Myanmar, in a country where dark skin people are somewhat of a minority, beauty standards are skewed.

My relatives would always give me Fair & Lovely whitening products to maintain and lighten my skin. My siblings and I were always told to not play outside in the sun because it would darken the skin. Always referred to as “Nyo-Chaw” in Burmese which translates to us “dark pretty girl”, the second-best compliment you can receive, only bested by “a thar phyu tel”, which translates to “fair-skinned”.

History of Colorism

So, what exactly caused colorism? According to Decode, this social issue dates back to slavery, when the white slave owners would rape their slaves and father mixed-raced children slaves who had much lighter complexions. These mixed-raced slaves would be then “given domestic work as opposed to the physical labor of darker slaves, this landing higher on the skin tone hierarchy because of their proximity to whiteness (MTV Impact).”

Fair to Glow

The idea that fairness is equated to beauty in these cultures has allowed for racism, specifically, anti-blackness to continue. This causes multi-billion billionaire companies like Unilever to promote skin whitening products such as Fair & Lovely in several countries such as India and Nigeria. This type of business exploits the insecurities of people of color and fuels more colorism in society. The normalization and persisting ignorance of colorism in society is a representation of the historical legacy surrounding racial prejudices American society has yet to relinquish.

Recently the Unilever company’s brand Fair and Lovely has decided to change their name to Glow and Lovely to soothe some of the backlashes they have been receiving from communities all over the world due to implications that their brand is promoting a standard of beauty that is discriminatory towards dark skin individuals.

Their ads always claim that using their skin lightening creams and other products will lighten their complexion to three or four times their original shade. All their ads and products have these skin shade measuring spectrum labels that insinuate that the fairest shade of them is the most desirable trait to aspire towards.

This type of skin lightening promotion discriminates against beauty standards in places that they were heavily marketing in and is dehumanizing the people with dark skin. These ads have blatantly displayed having dark skin as ugly and told that it could be fixed by using the Fair & Lovely products.

These ad campaigns portray various scenarios where the dark girl tries the skin whitening cream and gets the job interview, they were dreaming of, because she was fairer, or she found her a love interest or even looked beautiful after being portrayed lighter in these commercials. This type of commercials and marketing campaigns may be frowned upon in the West, however, are very common in places like India and Nigeria, and Fair & Lovely is amongst the highly influential trendsetters in this beauty industry.

Now with the rise in the fight for Black Lives Matter, incited by the death of George Floyd’s death by police brutality, there have been louder wake-up calls and many people speaking out against racism and colorism. Over recent years, many movements such as unfair and lovely or Instagram accounts have received a lot of attention and following for promoting dark skin representations and raising awareness.

The government of India got involved and initiated a ban of all whitening products in 2014 or any product or ads that reinforce “discrimination or negative social stereotyping based on the skin color”. This made Unilever want to avoid legal repercussions and encouraged their branding and campaigns to use terms like “radiance” and “glow” in place of “fair”. Some reasoned that remaining the brand to Glow & Lovely doesn’t eliminate the colorism but perpetuates and feeds on colorism. They make billions off of colorism.

Colorism in the Entertainment Industry

When we look at Bollywood, the film industry of India, we see a huge lack of diversity in terms of the range of skin tones. Though India’s population consists of a diverse range of skin color, we only see the lighter and fairer skin tones represented in the media. And the darker skin representation is almost nonexistent. Someone like Min

Even though I’ve only mentioned blatant colorism in the Far East, colorism is unfortunately still very prevalent and deeply rooted in the Western communities as well. Hollywood itself. Over ninety percent of Indians are tan; however, none of the main protagonists of any Bollywood films we see are ever tan. Darker Hollywood actresses of Indian Descent such as Mindy Kaling would never have made it in the film and entertainment industry of India. Simply because she is much darker than what Indian’s standards deem beautiful.

Conclusion

Media has a big influence on colorism. It influences and manipulates what the beauty standards should be in people's minds. There are a lot of things that we as people, regardless of our skin color, should do to combat colorism. Using social media and your social platforms like YouTube, we can share content that spreads awareness of these issues that can be generated into bigger movements as we move forward.

This means doing the work of educating yourself through social media about the issues and working towards unlearning some of the biases that you might have learned through life and the media. It takes a lot to change the way we view things, and it is difficult to admit our privileges. However, we must do so, to initiate positive change in our society so that each one of us, regardless of the skin color we are born in, can feel beautiful and accepted as they deserve to be.

Thank you for your time.

Honey Tin Latt is currently enrolled in the University of Tampa for her MBA. She is currently working part-time at Enterprise Solutions at her school. She used to work as a peer tutor, Resident Assistant, and Vaughn Information Desk assistant which led her to gain skills in customer service and leadership. You can reach her at [email protected].

Works Cited

Singh, Simrin. “A Letter to Indians Everywhere: Put Away the Fair and Lovely.” Medium, Medium, 2 Apr. 2020, medium.com/@simrinsingh/a-letter-to-indians-everywhere-put-away-the-fair-and-lovely-2bc0bd98464b.

Tai, Crystal. “The Backlash against Asia's Addiction to Whiter Skin Has Begun.” South China Morning Post, 3 Feb. 2019, www.scmp.com/week-asia/society/article/2184747/asias-addiction-whiter-skin-runs-deep-backlash-has-begun.