Via the News Tab, mutineer Dari points us at FT coverage of Shah Rukh Khan’s ad for Fair and Handsome skin cream –
Shah Rukh Khan, Bollywood’s biggest star and corporate India’s most ubiquitous brand ambassador, is coming under pressure to abandon his controversial endorsement of a men’s skin-lightening cream.
Strong enough for a wheatish woman but made for a man…
Television commercials for Fair and Handsome, airing in August, show Mr Khan (or “SRK”) lauding a product that many see as entrenching discrimination based on skin colour by encouraging people to bleach themselves a lighter hue.
…Mr Khan urges a dark-complexioned and depressed-looking young man, struggling to attract female attention, to stop using skin-lightening products designed for women.
“Why are you secretly using a cream for girls?” Mr Khan asks. “Their skin is soft. Yours is rough and tough.” Several shades whiter and visibly more self-confident by the end of the 40-second commercial, the young man duly snares the girl of his dreams.
The commercial, of course, is up for all to see on YouTube –
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Now is it me or does the pseudo-blackfaced dude in the commercial remind anyone of the lead in that paragon of awful 80s movies, Soul Man?
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A few weeks of Fair & Handsome away from… Alex P Keaton? |
As with the rapidly-becoming-infamous 1000+ comments “Is Dating White Right?” post a few weeks ago, a topic like this is a veritable lightning rod… So, perhaps I should just step out of the way and let the bullets fly.
I will however, point mutineer’s at Manish’s nearly-as-infamous original post on Fair & Handsome from a few years ago. At 200+ comments, it was one of the most trafficked posts of its time. However, many of us remember it more for its, dare I say, eyebrow-raising concluding note. 
About the “Innocent Divorcee”, in Punjab it usually was taken to mean that the girl is sexually innocent, a virgin and implied this was becuase the guy was, how should I put it, unable to fulfill his matrimonial duties, hence the divorce.
well. every grl says she’s an “innocent divorcee”. am i to believe that like 99% of divorces are casued by a lack of viagra?
i mean, every divorced grl.
But the question is, does Fair & Lovely actually work?
This is so true. My friend’s family sent him the picture of a girl taken by a professional and she looked light skinned. Later she sent a picture of her taken at home and she looks much darker. My friend is in two minds about meeting her. All I had to say was, let her move to the US and start drinking juices by the gallon and spend winters in the north-east and she’ll look like picture 1 ;-).
I don’t know. My Mom thinks Texas sun has done more harm than good for my skin. When I lived in Ohio, my Mom was happy that I was getting fairer, but now she’s convinced that I should move out of Texas or she can’t find a guy for me.
–You don’t see anything pathological about a whole nation of people wanting to change a primary racial characteristic, but many of us do
louiecypher..i don’t see any problem with anyone doing something to look good…be it fair and lovely or botox or anything else for that matter!
im not even sure that actually matters in the world of consumer products. as my marketing professor used to say “perception is reality”
Speaking of keeping up appearances for the other sex,do ABD men shave/wax/pluck-ze-follicles their chests?
Most DBD men I know take the hirsute route so wonder whether we will see a Gillette ad for chest shaving cream.
Mmmmm creammmmmmm.
LotR, NAIR my friend!
a lot of guys are bid on non-pale grls.
Meanwhile gora’s are obsessed with getting golden brown tans.
Fake Bake – sun tanning industry earned $4.2 billions in 2000 http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m4021/is_2001_Sept_1/ai_78426782
No. I strongly believe that people who use makeup should also have the sense to decide what to wear and how much to apply, for the sake of everyone’s sanity and well-being. I myself have several colleagues of the female persuasion who slather on their stuff with a shovel, looking positively ghastly at the end of it. But at least the effect is transmitted only on light waves, so it doesn’t turn corners. Much more annoying than makeup is overuse of perfume or cologne. It has been my experience that the person who finds a subtle fragrance too expensive will compensate by applying too much of a cheap perfume which does its best to announce the person’s arrival 30 feet away by burning everyone’s noses. At the end of this olfactory assault, I can’t even smell the curd rice and mango pickle I brought for lunch because a colleague has apparently swum to work in a stream of cheap scent.
Ever noticed how on sites like Shaadi.com, people will tick off the “wheatish” complexion box even when you can tell from their photographs that they’re darker than sin? (And please don’t take that comparison out of context–I’m a brown skinned lady who loves my non-veetish looks!) Perhaps they think possible suitors will relegate their appearance to bad lighting?
$hit. now im supposed to get painful leg lengthening procedures done, and regular hair removal? what the heck is going on around here?
As a milky-white white guy (“duddhu”?) with an unexplainable preference for dark skin (I must be brown on the inside), I’ve always found these lightening products strange and pointless. Not only is brown beautiful, it looks a hell of a lot more healthy than the typical pale, pasty, nearly translucent European skin tone. White people know this, even if only unconsciously, or they wouldn’t be out in the sun giving themselves melanoma all the time. If only those aunties with colorism problems would figure it out.
What does this have to do with Malayalees?
You mean a hairy mallu? The hair-raising adventures of Mammooty?
the thing about on line mate selection is that you can set hard and fast filters. if you click “dark”, you are filtered out of a lot of guys searches reducing your pool of potential mates. therefore, if you click “wheatish” you come up more often. if you are not rejected by the filter, maybe your picture will attract some guy that would not even see your picture otherwise. its the same reason guys lie about their height and income on these sites. (not that i am condoning lying. i just put my height and income as is on there)
“a lot of guys are bid on non-pale grls.”
Looks like I showed up right on time. For once.
Fairness creams are also popular in the United States, FYI, among non-desi people–but it’s funny how they get marketed in different ways. They never profess to lighten your complexion; rather, the creams profess to “brighten” your skin and make it more translucent. This also means getting rid of hyperpigmentation (dark spots caused by hormone fluctuations and sun damage), which is actually close to impossible (trust me, I’ve used the best of the best ointments out there). It seems particularly nefarious that although they don’t say they’ll lighten dark complexions, the majority of people who use them are specifically looking to do that–the implication being that dark skin in and of itself is THE ultimate blemish. I wonder if some of these companies in the U.S. (like L’oreal) were brought under pressure to change their advertising messages so that colorism wasn’t so blatantly front and center?
Yup, girls with cake on their faces looking like ghosts. And guys need to take it easy on the colognes, go to a desi party and all you’ll smell is Acqua di Gio mixed w/ J&J baby powder!
im a big fan of comfortable normal looking humans. in general.
what happens if a white chick uses fairness cream?
“Arya”….I see that looking fair is “looking good”. Demented people are usually the last to know that they are demented. Very appropriate handle you’ve chosen
Where is Rahul? HAve not heard from him on this whole thread yet..Rahul, the virtual harem is getting restless…
(perception of) Body image seems to be an international phenomenon, though Photoshop seems a better bet than F&L – at least till you meet someone IRL.
In all fairness (pun fully intended), knocking our pale-skinned brothers and sisters ain’t right. For me, skin that is soft, hydrated, and healthy can come in all kinds of hues. I once knew a Danish woman who had extremely delicate, extremely white skin–which I think is also pathologized to a certain extent, but of course, not on the same level as dark skin–and I thought she was absolutely beautiful, although I definitely wouldn’t want to be her in hot, humid climes…
what happens if a white chick uses fairness cream? she would turn into Mr. India
that guy hasnt been on in a long time.
No no, to become invisible, she must not use fairness cream. She must use vanishing cream.
L-We are talking at 2 different levels. You are at a much lower level than I am so I am just going to leave it here! Enjoy!
Yay, there is still hope for me! I am allergic to most makeup, so I never try any. I used to think that guys like the barbie dolls that flood most desi parties.
The double standards in indian society kill me.. the guy has to be all wheatish and slim..handsome but the girl can be dark..fat and ulgy.
wait…what “level” are we supposed to be on? i admire your “level” soooo much. i wish i could be on your “level”….
they do. but they also like other kinds of grls. perhaps the guys that hang out around barbie doll grls at parties wont like any other type. but, there are more types of guys out there than you can find at desi parties.
thats not how i always understood it. i think pressure on looks is much more on grls. i think pressure on height and income is on guys. if you have had a different experience, pl share.
if a guy is only attaracted to makeup and b00bs, you can do better.
We are who we are – Personally, for me someone being fair or dark doesn’t equate to anything. Ugly people come in all colors just as beautiful people do.
Not just goras…
A quick semi funny story (to me at least): I had an aunt visiting from Delhi for a couple weeks. My other Punjabi friend and I decided to go to the beach one day to relax, get a tan, etc. A day or two later, my aunt looks at me and says, “You know you did get a bit of a tan.” I said, “Word”. And then she goes, “But don’t worry – if you stay inside for a few days, you’ll get better.” I replied, “I’m not sick…” (Mentally sticking out my tongue – but not IRL). And then I helped her understand that my friend and I went to the beach in order to get a tan. She had the most confused look on her face. And then when my mother further explained that people in the US pay money to get darker, it just blew my aunt’s mind. She said, “Wow things really are different here, huh…” But she’s good humored about it – not that she was going to think any differently, but she at least was able to accept that a different mindset can exist which is better than all the aunties and uncles I know who try to convince my friends, relatives, and me that we should believe what they say about boys wanting fair-skinned girls more than dark girls because “everybody thinks this way”.
Because guys need ones that are twice as strong for their manly selves! (or did I misunderstand that line?)
Runa, I’m pretty confident that people are buying this to lighten their skin. At least, the prevalence of use seems high for women in northwestern states.
I always thought most of the “colorism” onus has been placed on women, not men. Like, it’s important to marry a light-skinned girl to help your kids turn out lighter. I actually don’t care if SRK is endorsing the cream, and I think we could talk for years about colorism in India and what it means (is it a colonial remnant? a product of fetishizing an Iranian beauty ideal? Arya-philia? North vs. South? class?). What I think is more interesting is that they’re now trying to take a standard often applied to women with respect to beauty and braodening their market by opening it to men. This seems kind of strange to me, but maybe because I’ve never heard of the idea of “lightening up” a guy. For those who keep fixating on the individual effect, I think there is a broader aesthetic/social trend, be it produced or already prevalent. It’s worth thinking of it in a larger context instead of automatically discounting it.
MN, don’t get your knickers bunched up. Fascism is a bit extreme, and I don’t think anyone’s calling for a ban. That said, I think the outcry would be similar if someone of a similar fame-level was advocating lightening creams for POC here in the U.S.
nala, my dadi used to love to lament how “wheatish” I turned out (like my father, apparently), and she used to go on rants about why I shouldn’t be allowed to play soccer because “she gets so dark!” At any rate, we should get together and we could microbrew together what with all this extra grain 🙂
u must get a lot of adoration from said aunties.
I think you should maybe take a look at the pictures from the “success stories” on shaadi.com – you’ll see a much different picture…
Not quite. Because I was never skinny, and I’m not tall, what I got from the aunties was, “Well at least you’re fair…”
But they love my personality. 🙂
I love that attitude from desi aunties…”he is short, but atleast he makes a lot money..” so on and so forth
I’m a dark rakshasa interrupting “Arya’s” austerities in the forests. How is he to obtain moksha with a demonic Lemurian giving him wet willies and replacing his ghee with ear wax ?
Ok, I give up. What is this a euphemism for? For guys I know – “I have a huge personality” speaks for itself, but for women I can’t think what aunties look for.
i think there should be an arb available in the marriage market for darker skinned grls. i.e. one (by the sound of things) should be able to meet a disproportionately attractive darker skinned grl on a matrimonial site. like a bolllywood looking chick + a few skin shades darker. i.e. all the skin shade snobs claw at each other over the light skinned grl, so one can get a darker sl*mmin h0ttie.
Damn, I wish I had paid more attention when family elders were narrating this sort of mythology to me.
So much for light-skinned ni**az never coming back into style
yikes…aunties talk about the size of a guys “persionality”? geez. i always thought they were talking about prescence and stuff when they talk about “personality”. oh god. thats messed up.
Arb = Arbitrage?
Please tell me you’re not building a case for the existence of a Nash equilibrium.