‘Fairness Creams!’. This range of products seems to have
captured the hearts of many innocent consumers today. Every form of media has been used by the
companies to reach out to the public.
People from every walk of life have been targeted by these companies. While the ladies are told that if they are
fair, they become lovely, the guys are made to equate fairness to handsomeness.
This makes me wonder, how the advertisements propose ideas which make no sense in reality, and many
of us actually believe them, and go ahead and buy the product!
Though I
have always known about the existence of these products, I noticed the
intensity of the marketing by the companies only recently. It was a weekend, and I was at home watching
TV, when a plethora of ‘fairness product’
ads presented themselves before my eyes.
What I observed from all the ads made me question my reasoning ability
and COMMON SENSE.
Let me share
a few such observations with you….
A girl,
probably in her 20s, doesn't have a job.
She is upset and depressed about it.
As she is sitting in her room thinking about the sadness in her life, her
friend breezes into the room, with a plastic smile and a tube of the magical fairness
cream in her hand. The friend consoles the girl, and advises her to use the
cream day and night, for a few weeks.
The enthusiasm on the friend’s face makes me feel she will probably tell
the girl, “Even if you forget to brush your teeth, it doesn't matter, but don’t
forget to apply the cream the first thing in the morning!” I’m horrified by my tiny imaginary train of thoughts. Thankfully, the idea of forgetting to
brush, but remembering to use the cream is not proposed by the friend! Getting back to the girl, a few days pass,
and we see the shade of her skin changing like the weather of Chennai. The girl’s face is ’fair and shiny now’ and
she takes on the world. She is
surrounded by many job offers. Innumerable
companies, from all over the world, want her to join them. They give me the impression that they will
shut down if she doesn't accept their offer. This is a moment when I want to
know who the HR guys of these companies are, and makes me want to ask them if
they really hire people this way! Moving
away from the job front, the other parts of the girl’s life have also
dramatically changed. The media now
wants to take her photos and interview her, since she is a ‘STAR’. Her family is proud of her now. Guys who never
noticed her before, seem to be mesmerized by her new look. They learn musical instruments for her, sing
songs from SRK’s romantic movies, dance to Prabu Deva’s steps, and even stand
in a queue to meet her, with flowers in their hands. Quite a hype? Yes, but it’s
not the end of it..
It is not
just the ladies who are targeted. The
guys have equally dramatic ads. As an example, let me talk about a famous
Indian sportsman, whom I liked a lot, before I spotted him in a ‘Fairness
Cream’ ad. This sportsman is not fair, but is extremely good looking. Even
today, when I watch him in the ad, I feel sad that he endorses the product and I’m
left cold by the shallowness of the ad. Anyways, this is just my point of
view. Coming to the ad, the player uses
the cream; and we see his complexion changing from his normal skin tone to
some tone that is close to white. The
‘vampire look’, according to me. We then see how the player becomes famous,
confident, and has many girls dancing around him. I doubt that the advertising guys make him
use a pale pink lip color in the ad, probably to celebrate the happiness of
turning fair and having girls dance around him!
And I’m here, most certain of the fact that this player is out of my
list of ‘CUTE GUYS’. Sob sob.
Then there
is the whole range of ads which talks of the power of Ayurveda to make us
fair. A girl is rejected and humiliated
during a job interview. Her father takes
the plunge to take revenge from them. And what does he do? He does intense
research on the herbs which make a person fair, and creates a cream for his
daughter. She uses it for some days, becomes almost white (like the player I
spoke about in the previous paragraph), goes back to the company where she was
insulted, and gets the job back! The
world is at her feet. And I’m here
wondering, “Really? You’ve got to be kidding me!”
There is
another ad that comes to my mind now, where a man has no time for his
wife. He is busy with work, and the lady
is sad. She uses a fairness cream for some days, becomes fair and her face glows like
a bulb. When the man sees the new look
of the wife, he decides to make more time for her. So what the company indirectly tries to tell
us is beauty is only external.They try
to sell the idea that relationships depend on how good a person looks, and how
much his or her face glows and shines. It’s
chilling and sad that many of us unknowing fall for the tactics of these companies,
and become their faithful customers.
The ads have
made a place in many people’s minds, and the products have started controlling
the lives of many people, just like the black creature that caught poor Peter
in Spider Man Part 3 and which he had a tough time letting go of. Many people have made ‘Fairness’ a mandatory
criteria while looking for a life partner.
Why? I don’t really know. People post ads like, 'Looking for a fair to extremely fair, beautiful girl. Caste no bar,
age no bar, etc etc..' I really wonder, would the guy agree to get married
to an 80 year old FAIR woman, as he
has specified that age is not a factor? Another ad I once came across said ‘Extremely
fair girl, 26, MBA, looking for good looking, fair MNC boy. Kindly contact….’. This ad made me wonder what if the girl for
whom the ad was posted gets engaged to an extremely fair guy. This guy happens to get tanned a few days
before the wedding, due to some unforeseen circumstance. May be the guy is a big fan of the sitcom FRIENDS,
and destiny makes him watch the episode ‘The One With Ross’s Tan’. The guy then marks his respect for the sitcom
by getting himself tanned! Would the
marriage get postponed or cancelled? Who knows! Let’s hope not.
The print
media is also equally affected by the ‘fairness mania’. I find it risky to open the newspaper early
in the morning, when I’m still half asleep. Why? A face, having shiny white skin
and shiny white teeth will be grinning at me.
Neatly placed, on the same ad, would be a big picture of the cream that
caused so much whiteness. The expression
on the face will then make me want to ask the face ‘Why are you grinning at me like a
maniac, early in the morning?’ and say ‘Go, get a life, and let me read the
newspaper in peace!’ I remember having accidentally watched a scene from a Hindi movie, where the villain kidnaps the heroine, and
drives away with her in a car. The hero
then follows them on a horse. The poor horse is made to run so fast, so as to
reach the villain’s car, that I think he would have silently cursed the hero
for many years after that. The hero now
jumps from the horse, and the horse turns around and goes back. The hero runs
alongside the villain’s car. The villain
is quite scared now. He still manages to
drive. The hero reaches the front of the
car. The villain is really frightened.
The heroine is thrilled and somehow manages to blush in the midst of all
the confusion. The hero stops the car
with both his hands, and lifts it up.
The heroine jumps from the car, to the arms of the hero. The car falls to the ground; its wheels touch
the road. The villain freezes because of
fear. The horse, who ran away a while
ago, and who I thought would have silently cursed the hero, comes back to him. The hero and his lady love climb on to the
horse and disappear. What happens next? I
have no clue. This whole scene, in
itself made my brain almost remove the word ‘sanity’ from its dictionary. Seeing a fairness cream ad early in the morning
brings the exact same feeling to me.
I could
continue writing on this topic for a long time. But would it really make a
difference to what is happening? No. So as I conclude this write-up here, I pray
that the advertisers make ads that make more sense, and that people choose what
they buy wisely, instead of falling into the ‘Whiteness Trap’.
