Turnabout’s fair play: Now the Indian cosmetics industry is targeting mattar-sexuals with a skin lightener for men.
The advert for the male cream shows a dark-skinned college boy relegated to the back seat and ignored by the girls until he uses the product. Soon enough, his complexion lightens and girls flock to him like moths to a flame…Until now, skin-lightening creams have been aimed almost exclusively at women. This is the first launched nationally for men… Called Fair and Handsome, the advertisement for the product gives the message: be fair or remain in dark oblivion…
“A look at the matrimonial section… there’s not one guy who admits to being dark and attractive, they just say we are wheatish and fair. So there is just not one dark-skinned person in this country, they are all rolling wheat fields of masculinity.” [Link]
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p>Naomi Wolf penned an interesting polemic on this subject in The Beauty Myth. She says many cosmetics companies fund women’s mags which are largely designed to make girls feel insecure about their looks. The industry appropriates the sheen of science (white lab coats in department stores, medicalized vocabulary like ‘invisible damage to your skin’) when many of them are really peddling snake oil. The more successful they are at creating a culture of hypochondria and medicalized insecurity, the more product they move.
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p>Many industries besides cosmetics use fear in advertising. However, it’s far more damaging when it hits women’s self-confidence instead of something more neutral like their feelings about, say, consumer appliances.
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p>In India, there’s a big class divide between those tanned from being out in the sun all day vs. those who work indoors. That’s in addition to the obvious association between caste and intrinsic skin shade.
In contrast, in the U.S., tan once again became a wealth marker after agriculture was mechanized. And dark skin has historically been associated with masculinity in the U.S. because of the eroticization of African slaves.
Besides, why mess with the perfection of a fellow mutineer? 
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Related posts: Bollywood delusions; Fair = Lovely and Bitiya meri gori gori by Vikrum Sequeira
Like Stephen Colbert might haughtily proclaim:
I called it!
ha ha
There is nothing wrong with a woman being aware that she is attractive (yes, because she is fair-skinned, for example), as long as she doesn’t become arrogant or egotistical about it, and doesn’t look down on other people (esp. other women) who may not be as fair-skinned as her.
Beware of confusing “awareness” with “egotism” (applies to both light-skinned women and any people who want to admonish them).
Razib said:
in the USA, a typical “fair” brown person is a smack-damn-nigger to those who really care if you are a particular shade or not… now, move the question to american browns, do they care? should they care? i don’t care about #2, if you like them dark or dusky, not my business. but, like i said, this isn’t brownland, and to me caring about shades of brown seems kind of bizarro in a country where the lightest brown people are basically dark. there were socially understandable reasons for color prejudice to develop in south asia. as i’ve noted, it predates european hegemony across most of the world. that being said, it is kind of an embarrassing cultural adaptation transposed into the american environment.
You expect people to reform themselves of deep atavistic tendencies because white people think we’re all “sand niggers” anyway? Have you considered that Browns may not care?
Whites trying to marry into Indian households experience a shitload of racism, which often shocks and surprises them. Being white, they assume that they are guaranteed acceptance.
The civil rights movement, multicultural studies, etc. ensures that we can smack down anyone explicitly racist.
As for the implicit racism, glass ceilings, etc. choose a profession like medicine where your earning power is not dependent on white approbation. Indian doctors wear saris to work coz they CAN.
Settle in a multicultural urban/suburban area where you are not constantly burdened by sandniggeritis, and where you have an opportunity to participate in cultural activities.
Colorism may be bad, but this is not a good reason to reform ourselves of it.
*There is nothing wrong with a woman being aware that she is attractive (yes, because she is fair-skinned, for example),
I am referring specifically to South Asian women, of course.
If you break it down, sure there’s some desire to look attractive to men on the part of hetero gals, but its got a lot to do with other women. We really dress up as much (or more) for other women as for men.
An ode to Susie Bright: Let’s get the solemn caveat out of the way: yes, some men and some aunties prefer a particular look, a particular shade of brown. And some people like pistachio ice cream above all other flavors. So what? What every man, every autny, every uncle, every warning mother knows however, is how maniacal women can be about their looks, and that it improves a man’s status to sport a pretty light thing on his arm. Skin lightness has more to do with phoney social status — its an emotional weapon, a marker of imaginary rank, and that it has very little to do with beauty or sex appeal. If desi women did an about-face–if every brown girl said, “dark skin is hot!”–then this nonsense wouldn’t hold up.
I agree that if desi girls reinterpreted their dark skin as beautiful, it can make a difference. I am a lot darker than my mother, but instead of pointing it out (like many of my aunties have) she put a more positive spin on it (ie I wish I had your skin tone, etc). Reverse psychology or not, it helped me to appreciate my dark skin.
Sigh… so let’s just give up on fighting racism, give up on our passions and desired career path, and go wherever we can be most comfortable and simply survive??? I don’t think so. This may be a solution for some, and I don’t blame them, but I like to see browns in a variety of professional and artistic designations. Getting out there and intermingling with all kinds of people is part of the key to furthering cultural understanding and tolerance, not hiding where you feel most comfortable. It may be hard work for the first few generations, but eventually it’ll pay off for future generations. After all, someone has to be the first to break the barriers down.
Have you considered that Browns may not care?
no 🙂 seriously. what white people think about brown people matters in the USofA because the majority is white. unless you want to seal yourself off into an ethnic ghetto, it matters. plain as that. and i’m not one to whine much about racism actually. i just think that we should all aim to be neitszchian supermen in our own lives, and stop being haunted by the specter of brownland values which are kind of weirdo in the USofA.
p.s. i don’t mind of course that most of you are far more brown culturally than i. shit like diwali is as american as apple pie potentially. curry is as british as the union jack. etc. etc. on the other hand, some brown thangs don’t translate well, and we should acknowledge them and try to shrug off gen-FOBs attempts to perpetuate them into the future.
Sigh… so let’s just give up on fighting racism, give up on our passions and desired career path, and go wherever we can be most comfortable and simply survive??? I don’t think so. This may be a solution for some, and I don’t blame them, but I like to see browns in a variety of professional and artistic designations. Getting out there and intermingling with all kinds of people is part of the key to furthering cultural understanding and tolerance, not hiding where you feel most comfortable. It may be hard work for the first few generations, but eventually it’ll pay off for future generations. After all, someone has to be the first to break the barriers down.
Where did I say one has to give up fighting racism?
Doctors don’t just survive, they make a very good income. Being comfortable is not a bad thing; most of the world, in case you haven’t noticed, is quite uncomfortable.
Sure go ahead and crack that glass ceiling. My point is that one shouldn’t/needn’t compromise their cultural identity, shouldn’t have to reform or “whiten” just to please the “man”.
But this may be a whole nother thread 🙂
My point is that one shouldn’t/needn’t compromise their cultural identity, shouldn’t have to reform or “whiten” just to please the “man”.
this will be a new thread, and i’m off today, but, i strongly disagree with this. i think one problem with immigration today is that many groups believe they can simply be in amerika and not of america. there have been groups like the amish or hutterites who have practiced this lifestyle for centuries, but their numbers and impact have been marginal. i think the majority needs a common culture for a nation-state to be stable, and i believe that that culture should be the values that we see in the declaration of independence and the constitution (with modifications for modernity, i.e., racial and gender equality before the law, etc.). to some extent america can live with economic integration but social segregation, but i don’t think it is a good thing for it to be ubiquitous. democracy is a way of life as much as it is a formal political progress. we should see others as cocitizens as much as consenting adults appropriate for capitalist transactions.
LOL. Doing what you don’t REALLY want to do is a compromise, thus it is for sustenance, and not necessarily what you are interested in. That’s what I meant.
Agreed.
and as for as colorism relates to american culture, i believe it is fundamentally anti-democratic and obviously rooted in the hereditary principle. an analogy would be white americans who take pride in their “noble” ancestry. not only it is a tip off of weaknesses and insecurities, it is fundamentality un-american to take pride in a nobility of blood. american citizenship demands one abjure titles of nobility for a reason.
Ang:
I never did say that someone should FORCE themselves to choose medicine. I don’t know where that came from.
Razib:
Citizenship means to many a passport, and thats all. As Suketu Mehta recently wrote in the Times, if the opportunities become thin here, his family would pack up and leave. (My apologies to all nationalists.)
If one is civil, does not commit crime and educate’s their children, what difference does it make whether or not I conform to whatever you think is “American” or “Un-American”? I fully understand that I may not ever become a politician because I could not stomach mouthing patriotic platitudes that have no resonance with me; I may never be very good in advertising becaause I don’t have the pulse of what white people like or dislike. But at the same time I am emotionally satisfied that I have not become just another mimic (white-)-man in the great American game. I have not progressively “whitened” to become more “mainstream” and had my identity manipulated in the name of a rather nebulous ideal. This does not mean one dislikes or disassociates with whites. It does not mean one has a low income. In fact, one can have a rather high income. Nor am I saying this is the only way to go.
I guess I somehow misunderstood this: (Am I too rational or literal?)
Whatever 🙂
All I’m saying is it’s worth it becoming a professor of medicine (or insert other passion here), despite glass ceilings.
Longest thread ever!
Using an example from my side of the Atlantic, this is exactly the reason why we ended up with 7/7. Also why there are a lot of intergenerational/cross-cultural conflicts within the South Asian population here in general.
I think that has much more to do with religious radicalism. There is a gaping difference between gang warfare where one or two wogs and/or blacks knife each other to death and cold-blooded, orchestrated suicide bombings. And if your angry at the man for ghettoizing you, there are easier ways out of the ghetto.
Im a british bengali with extremely fair skin (because im 1/4 white-my gran is white irish)and also find myself adored by asian friends and family who are amazed by my complexion. This really irritates me for the fact that your considered beautiful if you are fair-people dont bother looking at your facial features or more importantly, your personality. Asians shud stop this obsession with fair skin.
wow….i had a friend who was upset a few weeks ago. he cried to me, soemone called me dark today. and not that it really matter, but he’s not very dark. the poor thing, i said to him why worry about it? i said you’re wonderful person no matter what colour you are, even if you were plaid, striped, or polka dotted. it doesn’t mater what shade you are, and i, for one, love any shade. so it’s fine. besides, i finally gave up on my pasty complexion a few years ago, and learned to accept it, though after fidning out my own heritage, which has raised a few eyeborws from unkwoing folks. but anyhoo…..
as far as ic are, no matter what shade of whatever you are, doesn’t matter. and besides, i know some dear ones who are darker, and they’re quite easy on the eye. 😉
111:
Are you serious about having a black/desi dating discussion? That would be cool since it hasn’t been done. Do you have to wait for SM to have an article or blog connected to it?
fairness creams exists only in India, Rest of the world its “Tanning Creams”, Check out guys and gals how those cosmetics companies fooled Indians..haha