Mirror, mirror, on the wall... « Ranjan's Small Talk

Monday, March 29

Mirror, mirror, on the wall...

We were watching the fourth one-dayer between India and Pakistan over dinner at a friend's place (lets call her X) when I first saw this ad. The product was Fair and Lovely, and they showed a girl who had the potential to be a commentator, being given a tube of the fairness cream by her sister, which transforms her, makes her fairer, gives her confidence, and leads to her being chosen for her dream job.

Y, another friend, was furious. She asked, "Did you see THAT? How can they show such a thing?" I found nothing wrong with the ad and I asked, "What?" "How can they reinforce the prejudices inherent in our society?" X joined her and so did the other guests. Now, both X and Y are very attractive and very articulate young women with thinking heads and I kept my trap shut, especially because all the other guests were vehement in their criticism of the ad. Over time, the topic shifted and I thought this was the last I had heard on the issue

I was wrong.

By some quirk of coincidence, NDTV chose this topic for Barkha Dutt's usually tepid and pseudo-intellectual programme "We the people" and both X and Y happened to be among the invitees! I was constrained to watch the programme over my favourite "The Kumars at No. 42" where they were having Art Malik over.

I was taken aback by what I saw and heard. Apparently the society is biased towards fair people and the dark-skinned are treated as second-class and this ad reinforced the bias and the pre-dominantly female educated audience found it extremely objectionable. They indignantly claimed that the message being sent led to low self-esteem among the dark girls. I thought it was a joke, but it wasn't.

We all are made of various components, some of them being our genes, our family, our upbringing, our education, our attitudes, our outlook, our appearance, our sense of humour and our maturity. On different occasions, different components get precedence and other aspects of our personality take a back seat.

Ask yourself these questions:

1. While looking for a doctor to treat your mother, which parameter will you give precedence to?

2. While looking for a teacher for your little son, what will you evaluate the candidates on?

3. While looking for a gymnast, what would make you choose?

4. While looking for a partner, which qualities will you look for?

Most people will agree on competence in a doctor, care in a teacher, flexibility in a gymnast and understanding in a partner, but they will go ahead and choose the partner primarily on their looks/ appearance/ personality.

I know. Because 'ordinary' guys like me don't stand a chance (in most cases!) over well-built, handsome, good-looking guys, even if we have fancy degrees and solid pedigree. Even the pets we choose, are chosen based on How cuuuute! Maybe for marriage (which is a much complicated relationship) we would go for more than one parameter but for going out we choose the person mainly on looks.

And I see nothing wrong in it.

I was not born to rich parents (and remember, I had absolutely no choice in the matter) so I suffered on a few counts, but they made up through good upbringing and hard work. I am not too tall (again, mostly beyond my control) but I try and make up through wearing the right clothes etc.

Dark-skinned people have a choice. Either they enhance other aspects of their personality (attitudes, temperament, culture etc.) so as to make their skin tone a secondary parameter; or they try and enhance their skin tone through make-up or products like the one advertised. Simple.

Ads are meant to generate desire. They have to show that a man using Gillette gets petted more, or the one with a bike gets the gorgeous babe, or the one with the perfect body can get his women to jump into bed oftener.

If an ad makes you lower your self-esteem, the problem is not with the ad, but with you.

Posted at 3/29/2004 12:58:34 pm by Ranjan


	Name August 1, 2005 02:26 PM PDT c iya ganda yan, inzan ko yan eh


	SupriyaP October 26, 2004 09:13 AM PDT Hi there, Came across your post - an opiniated write indeed.. feel like an outsider here but the obsession with skin color is global, some get a tan and some a bleach the irony never fails to amuse me. -Supriya


	radical sports June 5, 2004 01:31 AM PDT GREAAAAAAAAAT POST!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


	Just Someone April 17, 2004 12:14 PM PDT Ads try to position a product in the prospects mind... the ad agency wud never have thot of black and white and all that followed with B- Dutt etc while they made this ad - they wanted to send a message about this cream - I agree this was a stupid ad - not well thot over - but isnt everyone giving it too much importance ? Is a 10 sec ad going to permanently impress our our kids mind about a dark colour...? Instead Is it not all these post happenings that is giving it new undesired and unwanted importance...?


	Chris Sordid April 7, 2004 07:49 PM PDT Hey Ranjan, how u doing? I kinda agree to most of ur views here.. Moreover, even if contempt over dark skin is immoral, not making ads or educating ppl or any such bullshit wont really change mindsets.. finally its upto each one of us to exhibit our uniqueness and to find our place in the sun !!


	Ritu April 5, 2004 07:57 PM PDT GAWD!!!!!!! Thats a lot of opinions Ranjan... You sure do know how to rake it all up huh! I abs and TOTALLY agree with your last line...and with Y as in PriYa, and X and all of em too.... Society encourages some prejudices and we end up endorsing them..directly or indirectly...and we shud NOT take them for what they are. We must voice our dissent...and even though we know that it all in the UPBRINGING, the reality is never BLACK or WHITE....


	Y as in priYa? April 2, 2004 02:31 PM PST I have to say this here - though a lot has said on fair skin -- the last sentence in Ranjan's post does NOT make our prejudices on skin color OK. With ads like these, what we are doing is handing down these very prejudices to our children - and remember children don't 'think' about it the way we do - they just look at the ad and then at their skin and say ummmmm....


	Khushee April 1, 2004 04:38 AM PST Really interesting post :)


	Vie March 31, 2004 02:29 PM PST I have seen the model on which these ads work.. the target consumer is not just the dark women but anyone who is dark.. as xyza pointed out I would also say that the last line was the clincher... but it can be very draining to try and keep up the attitude in society which has a natural inclination for a fairer complexion... an oft discussed but important issue that needs senstization... good post..


	S Simon March 31, 2004 02:12 PM PST ranjan... I am so dissapointed in you my friend... you actually like "The Kumars at No. 42"... haha... okay... just pulling your leg... hehe!..


	S Simon March 31, 2004 02:10 PM PST "Maybe for marriage (which is a much complicated relationship) we would go for more than one parameter but for going out we choose the person mainly on looks"... I agree... but that dosen't make it any less sad... even for marriage... with the kind of arranged ones churned out for most of us, do we have any other choice except that the girl has to be good-looking (which always inadvertently means 'fair') and good home-maker... someone like my cousin, who would have got to spend something like 6 hours (total) with the girl he got married to recently, before marriage... what other criteria is he supposed to look for?... isn't that pathetic how our system works.... you just resign yourself to that relationship and take the fact that the girl is 'atleast' good-looking as a sort of 'feel-good factor'.... and we all know that the initial physical attraction wears off as quickly as you get it...


	:::LL::: March 31, 2004 10:18 AM PST For once, you convinced me that there was nothing wrong with the ad... To think of it, the product itself is about acquiring a fairer complexion & it is only through juxtapositioning the fair & not-so-fair that they can advertise their product... What however is objectionable is the manner fair skin is being equated to success & fame... People have rightly commented & if the admakers feel socially responsible they should try n set the tone of their ads right...


	aqua March 30, 2004 08:26 PM PST ranjan...this is another instance of the harsh reality in our society. look at the papers and you will see ads which want a "a FAIR and homely girl for IIT+IIM educated 7 figure salary earning boy" (who in all probability looks like a pig) but wants a pretty girl.


	xyza March 30, 2004 08:15 PM PST I do agree with most of the comments here that fair people are given an unfair (no pun intended) advantage over the rest. But isnt that what makes the Caucasians "better" than the blacks? Also, this is a pretty old and oft-discussed issue, didnt Nietzsche have a controversial argument on how beautiful (fair and lovely) people should get better treatment because they deserve it because of their beauty? Its hard to argue with logic like that! My only comment here is Kudos to you for seeing a problem and rather than harping on it choosing to move past it. I think your last statement was the clincher. These advertisements can only do so much for us ... all else lies within, and these ads can only affect us if we choose to let them. Choosing to respect ourselves for who we are gives these ad's no meaning or power. Well said Ranjan, good for you!


	Twilight Fairy March 30, 2004 05:00 PM PST Ranjan .. you sound as if you have never even picked up the paper to see matrimonial ads.. what do you see except the words 'fair girl wanted' and the sorts.. ?? and anyway if you have been following fashion magazines or beauty pageants, they talk as if they are waking up to a new kind of beauty - the dark skinned one!! As if they needed that waking up!! doesn't all this show clearly what our society prefers? These ads only justify something stupid that has been ingrained since a long time.. I personally find dark quite attractive ;-) .. and 'exotic' in toro's words ;-) oh and BTW if I may say so, that liking for the 3rd umpire is quite obvious.. isnt it ;-) and last but not the least.. you are the one who's used a copyright word.. do you know that smalltalk is actually a procedural programming language?


	Alka March 30, 2004 12:23 PM PST I think where this freedom of choice stops? Michel Jackson going completely fair. And see, at what length he has to take precautions to preserve that "fair" skin.This fair feeling is universal. People say they have freedom to drink and smoke. I say, if I am carrying, I have freedom of choice to abort, if the foetus is feamle. Is there any limit to exercise to THIS freedom of choice?


	delhi brat March 30, 2004 10:19 AM PST Ranjan, agree. Nobody can make us feel inferior without our consent. How we feel about ourselves has everything to do with us, and the way we interprete things. And I am not sure that height, fairness, weight, a full head of hair (now, that comes straight from the heart !) etc. have anything to do with it. The only person we are running a race with, is ourselves. If we beat ourselves, and our own baser, greedier instincts, we win. If we eat judiciously, exercise properly, treat people well, spread love around, strive for excellence, do what needs to be done when it needs to done, if we take disruptive elements like the F&L ad in our stride ... we win and we feel good. If we do not, we lose, and we feel agitated.


	Y as in priYa? March 30, 2004 09:22 AM PST Ranjan - i do agree that we are giving this ad WAAAY too much importance than it actually deserves. However the fact that this ad is encouraging sales of the creams means that it is in a silent manner encouraging the prejudice. By talking about it - on and off tv.. we encourage ourselves and others to wash the prejudice out of your systems - - because whether you are aware of it or NOT - you do foster the prejudice that fair skin is better than dark skin.


	W-bug March 29, 2004 09:17 PM PST Name is me. I don't know why it didn't show up W-bug in the first place. But tell me honestly, would you guess it?


	crab March 29, 2004 08:54 PM PST So you say dark complexioned girls are treated at par with their fairer counterparts ?!!!!!!!!!? And I thght you were posting from Delhi .


	Name March 29, 2004 07:56 PM PST R, you stupid MCP, first of all 'Fair' is NOT equal to 'Lovely. Secondly, I now fervently pray to god you get your 'fair and lovely' wife and when everything falls into place (or apart) you realise that marriage is NOT ABOUT looks. On the other hand, since I like you so much, I also pray that you DON'T get her, instead you get a darkie who cannot cook or clean, snores, and is everything else that you supposedly (and chauvanistically) think is undesirable in a wife, and that she MAKES YOU FEEL WONDERFUL ABOUT YOURSELF. Fourth umpire rests her case.


	Ranjan March 29, 2004 04:22 PM PST Toro: Though its not relevant to the discussion at hand, I personally find 'dark' people more attractive. And I do not think the ad or the society at large perceives anyone dark as mediocre. Deepan: I do not want to justify the previous ad, or even this one. What surprises me is the amount of hype generated by this one, and why the ads of VLCC or Axe or Raymond's do not evoke so much criticism, whereas they also play on the slim/ attractive/ successful aspirations. priYa: Who knows if F&L folks did not pay off NDTV to air this program! I guess more people noticed this mediocre ad AFTER the criticisms! And, I kind of have a feeling about your liking for the 3rd umpire ;)


	Y as in priYa? March 29, 2004 03:43 PM PST Just to set the background: I did NOT say those things that were quoted as 'my' words at that party. I think you've got X and Y mixed up. Second - the latest fair&lovely ad does not put darker skin down in so many words - - BUT - for anybody in the sub continent watching, it rings those very bells of prejudice that have been instilled in both boys and girls that dark skin is not good! Third - Ads that promote such prejudices should be banned not because of some woman's injured self-esteem but because it is created in bad taste AND you don't have to be a woman with a poor self esteem to recognize that. Fourth - This does not mean that fair&lovely should be banned NOR does it mean that this product cannot be advertised for without exploiting cultural prejudices. Creativity is NOT in the obvious. Fifth - People are free to try different shades of skin tones provided they are not putting themselves in harm's way. There are very strong opinions that also voice the 'safety' of using such creams - so watch out for that! Sixth - People who have one definition of what beauty means (fair skin) sadly lose out on appreciating beauty in its many forms. This is also not a good enough reason to encourage prejudices like the one we have about darker skin in all its different forms and shapes. Last but not least - - I love the third umpire here :) Priya


	Deepan March 29, 2004 03:05 PM PST Ranjanda: how can u justify the earlier Fair & Lovely ads where by applying the cream the dad is screaming "Kundli Badal Gayi".. these ads as Toro pointed out are very clearly potraying dark skinned as undesirable! I personally think dark skin is awesome and facial features are that much more enhanced in darker skins. This ad is not targetted towards me (man, fairish) and it does not even get anyway near my self -esteem. I still find the ad objectionable! Should we accept the third umpire decision and call this ad as "unfair" ? :)


	Toro March 29, 2004 02:09 PM PST Anyone could be comfortable with mediocrity... that is entirely their problem. Ranjan, the problem with these ads are that they potry anyone dark as mediocre; and that is where the ad is unfair. I'm dark and I like my color--in fact it makes me exotic. But if an ad sought to potray me as an undesirable color, it is my prerogative to criticize that ad. An analogy: Blind people: We do not put them down because of a physical characteristic or a "lack of vision"--the point is to be humane while creating the ads and not derogatory. While your views and opinions are yours, my friend, do not proclaim these ads as "Ok/Acceptable" on my (any "darkie's") behalf as well. That is the point. *No offense is intended here to anyone.

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