Bollywood actors called out for promoting skin whitening creams sold in Canada, while protesting racism
A skin whitening cream adverrtisment.
Written by: Deepak Sharma
Bollywood actors posting against racism in the wake of George Floyd’s death and worldwide demonstrations of Black Lives Matter rallies have been called out on social media this week for their promotions of Indian skin lightening creams like “Fair and Lovely”. Twitter users have brought the attention of racist and controversial commercials that many of these actors once produced to promote the creams.
Fair & Lovely is a skin-lightening cosmetic product of Hindustan Unilever introduced to the market in India in 1975. On their website, they market it to consumers as “Fair & Lovely is the world's first fairness cream with 100 per cent safe ingredients. Dermatologist tested and proven to expertly treat skin fairness problems.” However other dermatologists have argued against this cream and the long term use, saying daily application harms the skin over time.
Chemicals and Illegal Cosmetics Sold by Canadian Retailers
Most of these appealingly named creams are in fact a dangerous cocktail of steroids, hydroquinone, and tretinoin, the long-term use of which can lead to health concerns like permanent pigmentation, skin cancer, liver damage and mercury poisoning among other things.
There were even studies done and headlines such as “Does Low Mercury Containing Skin-Lightening Cream (Fair & Lovely) Affect the Kidney, Liver, and Brain of Female Mice?”
Recently, CBC Marketplace did an undercover investigative video about the products’ sale in Canadian stores. ‘Whiter skin in 14 days': Tracking the illegal sale of skin-whitening creams in Canada” -- Lab tests reveal alarming levels of dangerous, unlisted ingredients in popular products.
Many of these skin-lightening products are made in different parts of the world, including Africa, Asia and the U.S.. A lot of them are sold in Canadian beauty supply stores, including those that cater to African, Asian and Caribbean communities.
After Marketplace shared their findings with Health Canada, the regulator issued a new advisory, warning Canadians that the sale of unauthorized skin-whitening products is illegal and using them can pose serious health risks.
However, the skin-whitening products remain a global success .An inventive and growing market of creams and salves has cropped up to fill this demand of skin whitening, which now pulls in over US $400 million dollars annually. Some of the most widely-sold products include Fem, Lotus, Fair and Lovely and its gendered-equivalent Fair and Handsome.
Racist Commercials
The “bleaching syndrome” goes far beyond skin colour, with Indian women also questioning their hair texture and colour, speech and accents, marital choices and dress style thinking of wearing dresses and skirts as opposed to Indian traditional sarees, raising real concerns about female self-esteem.
One commercial portrays a female dancer in rehearsals not being given the main role in the front of the stage and has to perform behind other fair skin women because of her brown, dark skin complexion. She then applies this cream and over a couple of days, she is transformed into a foreign lady, with white glowing skin. The director then gives her the spot on the stage because he thinks she is more beautiful now and will capture the audience's attention.
Kangana Ranaut who is a very politically active Bollywood actress has called out the celebrities. “The Indian celebrities they’ve been endorsing all kinds of fairness products and today shamelessly they stand and say black lives matter, I mean how dare they? Our industry even shies away from casting darker actors for characters that are supposed to be fair-skinned.
“Why is no one asking them about these million-dollar deals that they’ve been doing with all kinds of fairness products and how come suddenly all Black lives matter because racism is deep-rooted and when you have commercialized such events that is the lowest humanity can hit,” Ranaut said in a recent interview with BBC.
India’s obsession with lighter skin is reflected clearly during weddings, with most brides asking their makeup artists to lighten their skin tone. Even ignorant statements like, “She got lucky and should be grateful he married her despite her dark and ugly complexion” are still whispered and gossiped around India amongst relatives who do not agree with the bride's skin colour.
Historical Roots Of Oppression in The British Empire
Fair skin has long been part of India’s national psyche for beauty, social status and dominance. The various settlers, rulers, invaders, and colonizers who entered India starting in the 1400s were relatively light-skinned. This includes the Dutch, French, Portuguese, Mughals, and of course, the British, who were in India from the 17th century until India’s independence in 1947.
During the rule of the British Empire, skin tone prejudice became formally ingrained; the colonizers kept light-skinned Indians as allies, giving them extra advantages over the rest of the Black people.
Caste System’s Religious Significance
The British colonizers were able to build on India’s existing caste system, a socio-economic hierarchy with origins in Hinduism but which now permeates across Indian society. The upper castes like the Brahmins and Kshatriyas were traditionally powerful (and also fair-skinned).
Being subject to a succession of white(ish) overlords has long associated light skin with power, status and desirability among Indians. Today, the contempt for brown skin is embraced by both the ruling class and lower castes, and reinforced daily by beauty magazine covers that feature almost exclusively Caucasian, often foreign, models.
The personal connection
I myself have been ridiculed for my brown skin by Indian relatives who told me to apply as much moisturizer and creams as well as sunscreen when going outside in the summer sun. I would walk into an Asian food centre, an Indian grocery store in Brampton, Ont. and in the aisles I would see the many different skin-care cosmetics and products and I would see a lot of fair skin-lightening creams the most popular being Fair and Lovely.
Indian customers are constantly being reminded of this false beauty standard even in Canada because these kinds of stores sell them and cater to people's insecurities. Relatives unintentionally put pressure on their children to look a certain way, and the Indian appearance standards are high. Being a boy I was lucky and fortunate in some way because it was acceptable for a boy to have brown skin, but if this were someone's daughter it would be a different story and outcome with intense self-image pressures.
We can only change this through dialogue and having conversations because most of these racist ideas start in families and in households. We as the young generation must oppose these old traditional beliefs and focus on every skin colour in society, because India is fascinating as you can have dark skin, black, brown or even white. It’s just that the Indian pop-culture media such as movies and commercials set the standards of aesthetics and beauty, they are very biased and majority of them only feature light skin actors and models.
Younger generations are now starting to push back. In July 2017, 18-year-old Aranya Johar published her Brown Girl’s Guide to Beauty on Youtube. The video, a spoken-word poem containing lines like “Forget snow-white/say hello to chocolate brown/I’ll write my own fairy-tale” went viral, reaching 1.5 million viewers around the world on its first day alone.
Though many Indians still feign ignorance about social discrimination based on skin colour, the country’s obsession with whiteness can also be violent. In recent years, fear of black and brown skin has also spurred harassment and attacks on African students living in India. During a time of a movement, revolution and call-to-action we must not forget the hypocrisy of some actors. Their commercials and damaging product endorsements have created more hate and intolerance against people of dark skin colour, including Black people.
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