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Abstract
Skin-lightening or ‘fairness’ creams – with their troubling colonial overtones – are big business in India, an over $200 million industry that comprises the largest segment of the country's skin cream market. Although corporations like Unilever have been widely criticized for profiting on colorism, they continue to produce advertisements that equate light skin with beauty, success, and empowerment. Through an analysis of the fairness motif in advertising and popular media, I first show how skin-lightening creams are positioned as alchemic agents of self-transformation. Secondly, as the use of skin lighteners continues to grow in the global South, I ask: how are we to understand this aspiration for lightness? Rather than viewing this kind of cultural mimicry as a form of false consciousness, I argue that it represents an anxious love for the ‘other’ that is conditioned by power relations.
Acknowledgements
I am grateful to the Center for Place, Culture, and Politics at the CUNY Graduate Center for inviting me to participate in its annual seminar as a faculty fellow. Robyn Spencer, Marisa Lerer, Jonathan Gray, and Peter Hitchcock, among others, provided thoughtful comments on a draft of this piece. Thanks also go to Syed Ali, Andy Perrin and UNC Cultural and Political Sociology Workshop, Caroline Lee, Katherine Chen, Gloria Origgi, Ariel Colonomos, Olivier Morin, Ben Carrington, Christopher Bonastia, John Skrentny, Asher Ghertner, Preetha Mani, and the editors and reviewers at Social Identities.
Notes
1. NDTV, 28 September 2008, URL (consulted June 2012): http://www.ndtv.com/video/player/we-the-people/why-are-indians-obsessed-with-fairness/39921.
2. Emami website, URL (consulted July 2012): http://www.emamigroup.com/Fair-&-Handsome.
3. There is considerable debate about the category of Indo Aryan itself, its supposed homogeneity, and its geographical origins. It is also disputed whether early speakers of Indo-European languages were ‘indigenous’ to the subcontinent, which I cannot discuss here (compare Bryant, Citation2004).
7. First aired 28 March 2008. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v = -tRasuTtMJo.
9. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v = l-eQ8cJJ01I&feature = player_embedded (24 January 2011).
11. Internal marketing memorandum dated 19 November 2008.
13. NDTV, ‘We the People,’ 28 September 2008. Accessed on 5 March 2012 at: http://www.ndtv.com/video/player/we-the-people/why-are-indians-obsessed-with-fairness/39921.
14. Interview on NDTV. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v = yyAtBBispV0.
15. NDTV, ‘We the People,’ September 28, 2008. Accessed on 5 March 2012 at: http://www.ndtv.com/video/player/we-the-people/why-are-indians-obsessed-with-fairness/39921.