This is really what the ads below are doing: Brown women can now empower themselves by taking their skin into their own hands to make it lighter with the help of Fair and Lovely.
This article defends the ads as not as demeaning as they used to be (!!!!!) and that the craze for "fairness" has nothing to do with colonialism and is part of Indian culture. In other words, Fair and Lovely is not really imposing its own image of beauty on brown women; it's just responding to a deep, wholesome cultural need for which the company should be given an award for its multicultural sensitivity!
The victims of the first two adds are Indian women. The third is for Arab women. Urgh!!!!
8 comments:
I know the young lady in the first add. She was a contestant in Star Academy IV and she's Lebanese Christian. She was good in singing English and French music but her Arabic sucked and she was not among the last four.
Actually, Indian culture was racist before colonialism. The lowest caste, the "untouchables," or Dalit, are the darkest ethnic group, and the caste system definitely predates European colonialism. I'm sure the pre-existing racism in India was aggravated by colonialism, but it is not a result of it.
Anonymous,
I understand that. But the fact that this kind of racism is "in the culture" and not imported is still not a good reason to justify making these advertisements. That was my point.
Isn't it disgusting? I couldn't believe the racism in those pictures. Even worse is that the creams used contain Mercury and can be deadly to the women using them.
somebody should've told youb that everything is empowering.
^ ^
activist mommy,
u r right. They can be physically harmful, not only psychologically.
nadia,
thanks for the article.I'm afraid I'm not convinced that owning zillions pair of shoes are empowering! Mabye to the the show making company.
yeah, it was a satirical article, as is all the stuff in the onion, it just reminded me of this :)
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