MIRROR, MIRROR ON THE WALL...

In a world where beauty is a highly covetable commodity, are we still equating it with fair skin?

- RIA SINGH

“This pink is a light colour, it will make your skin look even darker!” remarks the groom’s grandmother as Sarina, the bride-to-be, tries on her wedding ensemble. Despite her preference for a pale pink shade, she opts for a red one under the belief that it would make her skin appear less dark. A scene from the web series Made in Heaven [2023], it touches upon India’s prevailing obsession with fair skin and its impact on the collective psyche of the nation. Despite the global shift towards celebrating diversity and embracing unique identities, marketing for fairness creams, lotions, and treatments that promise a lighter complexion remains a thriving industry, banking on age-old societal preferences and biases.

According to The World Health Organization (WHO), marketing industry forecasters, particularly in Asia and Africa, predict that the ‘skin whitening’ industry will be worth an estimated US $31.2 billion by 2024. Recognising the growing sensitivity towards the use of the term ‘fair’, the cream manufacturers have deftly navigated around public scrutiny by adopting a more inclusive and euphemistic term—‘glow’. A research led by the Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS) in 2018 delved into the preferences of 1,238 women and 746 men regarding the use of fairness creams. The findings revealed that 59.6 per cent of women and 46.1 per cent of men acknowledged using fairness products at various junctures of their lives. In response to the inquiry about their motivations, 31.2 per cent expressed a desire to enhance their aesthetic appeal by appearing ‘beautiful’, while 36.2 per cent believed that achieving a fairer complexion would contribute to a sense of ‘cultural acceptance’.