Fair and unlovely: India confronts dark-skin bias

10 Jul 2020 01:50PMNEW DELHI: When Chandana Hiran was a child, strangers would urge her to lighten her skin. Today the Indian student is leading a campaign against whitening creams as global anti-racism protests highlight the obsession with fair complexions for many in Asia.

Multinationals have long profited from sales of whitening creams, facewash and even vaginal bleaching lotions, by advertising the message that beauty, success and love are only for pale-skinned people.AdvertisementNow, after mounting outrage sparked by the Black Lives Matter protests in Western cities, companies like Unilever say they"want to lead the celebration of a more diverse portrayal of beauty".

As a result, many associate pale skin with wealth and beauty - a prejudice bolstered by Bollywood films which rarely make darker-complexioned women the star and frequently portray successful city-dwellers as fair-skinned. The bias begins at birth, said Kavitha Emmanuel, who visits schools promoting her"Dark is Beautiful" campaign launched in 2009.

"When I look at the fairness-cream commercials it looks like a good product... they show that when people become fairer, they get jobs, they get proposals for marriage," she told AFP. The skin-lightening industry is one of the world's fastest-growing beauty segments, and is forecast to be worth US$31.2 billion by 2024, according to the WHO."There's no letting society off the hook here," activist Kavita Krishnan told AFP.

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