Who's the fairest of them all?

It was in the eighties I think, that the Indian beauty products market opened up big time. What was initially a rich woman's playground became accessible to all and sundry, from the average office-goer to the domestic maid. They were wary at first, ofcourse. Limiting their explorations to Cuticura Talc and Snow (which I think was what face cream used to be called then).

Then Fairness Creams came, saw the lovely dusky complexion of the Indian female, conquered her psyche. Year upon year of advertisement upon advertisement. 'Dark is ugly', 'You have the powers to change your destiny, so become fairer'(excuse me, but what in heaven's name is the connection?), 'If you want to become an airhostess, use Fair & Lovely', 'God, I dont have a son plus we are middle-class plus it's my daughter who's earning'(Solution? Fair & Lovely ofcourse).

There's this other ad. She uses a particular brand of soap, and is an
Award-Winning Designer('only by coincidence', I'm sure the ad-makers
will have us believe), and her child comes in screeching
Mummmeee pinnaeyum classil first!!. So there. Somehow it gets ingrained into the common consciousness that beautiful, and more importantly- the ones whose skins glow with youth(and too much soap and cream) are the women who'll win awards, whose kids will be super-achievers.

Relating success to skin-color and using that to continually attack a whole generation's self-esteem is a crime. So imagine. Fair faces (well not fair exactly, just somewhere between bleached and blanched), darker hands and legs. So she ends up looking like a badly made-up Geisha.

Quite strange that I've never actually met a woman who has become fairer because she used a fairness cream. Never.

What the women apply onto their faces is a balm that will first kill their self-worth and then claim to repair it, dupe them into believing they are somewhere on the road to becoming fair and therefore successful. That they need endure only this four weeks in hiding and testing, after which Ooh La La World, here she comes!!

What.a.mass.deceit.

Girls have begun to accept dark complexions only just now- not because they sat down and thought a while, but after Lara Dutta won the Miss Universe crown, after Bipasha Basu became a sensation. Now the ad industry is capitalising on that too, ofcourse. Paint models dark and darker, dust their skins with gold color, make dark look sexy. A cousin of mine was burning her skin in the sun because she wanted to look darker, cos then she'd look sexy like Fleur Xavier.

After wrecking young girls' psyches for all these years, the Fairness Phenomenon seems to have taken a temporary respite. Now it's time to target all those thirty-something women. Oh look, your skin is damaged, your cells are dying, crying for help. Use this Skin Repairer. The ad shows this 30 yr old cosmetologist (or whatever they are called) tell us we need to now use this cream. So that(says the ad) women dont end up losing their husbands to other women. So the husband-guy sits there in the hotel and leches at other women not because he's a pervert, but because his wife is thirty(oh that's such an old age) and her skin is dying.

So this is what the industry winning all those gold and silver lions
does to a woman. Create an ugliness in being dark, and insecurity about being thirty.