White Beauty is a skin cream sold in India, made by Pond’s, that promises to lighten darker complexions. By using the product, brown-skinned persons can achieve “a pinkish white glow,” according to a series of recent television advertisements for the product. In one of these ads, a young woman is caught in a love triangle. She has been ditched for another lady, and longs to win back her man. For all the glossy production, there is nothing subtle about the story: the new girlfriend is pale and pinky, the jilted girlfriend has a dusky complexion. The ending is predictable: dusky uses White Beauty and wins back her sweetheart.

These ads were screened in India over the past few months, with an almost identical ad airing across Asia. (The Asian commercial was for Flawless White, a similar product made by the same company, Unilever.) Women’s groups in India decry such ads, deeming them offensive and racist, “denigrating to dark skin,” says Brinda Karat, the general secretary of the All India Democratic Women’s Association. The organization is campaigning to have advertisements for skin whiteners banned. They have met with the national Indian government to lobby lawmakers and voice their concerns. They have already achieved some success. Ads for the Fair and Lovely brand of lightening cream, also made by Unilever, were dropped in 2003 after Karat’s group lodged a complaint with the National Human Rights Commission in New Delhi. Ads for that cream depicted impoverished, darker-skinned women trapped by their circumstances and, implicitly, by the colour of their skin. In each, the dusky ladies were able to better themselves by slathering on Fair and Lovely. Once they were whiter, they were able to improve their circumstances, and land their dream jobs, as air stewards, actors and even cricket commentators.

Karat’s campaign is twofold. She wants to encourage Indians to see brown as beautiful, and to reject any idolization of paler complexions. She says the existing hierarchy is damaging and demeaning to a people (and also a continent) who, for the large part, have very different skin tones from the white ideal many espouse. To encourage people to rethink their attitudes toward race, she has launched an education campaign, distributing leaflets and holding meetings. These focus on raising awareness of the racism, subtle or overt, in the advertisements for these products, she says. They also look at the possible health concerns of skin whiteners.
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