A darker shade of fair

You have perhaps heard the story of how ‘fairness’ creams came to be launched in the Indian market. As the story goes, two marketing managers of Hindustan Lever were discussing over lunch, the phenomenon of ad after ad in the matrimonial section of the classifieds expressing a preference for ‘fair’ complexioned girls. They wondered if this suggested there was potential in the market for a cream, the regular application of which tinkered with the production of melanin by the skin and thereby caused the skin tone to turn progressively lighter.

With a crowded marketplace came a bewildering array of promises: everything from a stunningly handsome ‘boy Adonis’ as a groom (addressed to the girl consumer) to the corner suite in the ‘executive’ sections of an office for young men starting out in their professional careers. But all that is out. The ‘fairness’ cream advertising community has been put on notice by the Advertising Standards Council of India (ASCI).

In the eyes of the ASCI, the ‘fair’ visage that these ads sport are insulting and hurtful to the sentiments of worshippers of a god of a darker hue. Without quite saying as much, the restraint that the industry must now exercise pretty much rules out anything by way of marketing communication in fairness cream products. This raises a basic question: If you can no longer promise good partners in marriage or great promotions in the office and, in short, every prospect that is alluring in life, what then are these communications supposed to promise?

Then there is a larger issue. Notions of beauty or fair complexion are ephemeral and invariably change with the times. So why fuss over something that people in a different era in the future might well look upon with amusement if not outright derision?

Notions of fairness of complexion have indeed changed. Granted this is hearsay. But I have it on the authority of my Hindi master. History would judge him as largely unsuccessful in his efforts to instruct young minds under his charge on the nuances of the Chayavaad and Rahasyavaad schools of Hindi poetry. But as to an ability to fill their minds with useless bits and pieces of knowledge that make sitting through a class somewhat passable at a time when you would rather be fooling about on a cricket ground, he had few peers, if any.

Fifty years ago, the College of Engineering ,at Guindy, in Chennai, organised a science exhibition. Among the many exhibits on display, a pigment analyser was hugely popular. The device gave a reading of the ‘fairness’ of one’s complexion on a scale of 1 to 100. It had a stainless steel base. You placed your palm on it and a beam of light flashed on the back of your palm to analyse the skin tone. An analog display device with a needle pointed to a number indicating an individual’s complexion score.

I don’t suppose people who were getting their ‘fairness’ quotient measured strained the machine to the limit of its breaking point. But this is the interesting part. Even a Kim Kardashian, if it was at all possible, would not have caused the needle to break free of its moorings and bring it crashing down. For the machine was designed to register a perfect score of 100 to the colour of a ripe yellow lemon!

The student designers were not gripped by a mood of whimsicality in trying to portray an outlandish notion of a fair complexion by giving 100 marks to a shade of bright yellow.

Historically, for the people of Tamil Nadu, and women in particular, the notion of ultimate in beauty lay, not in a sallow complexion but in one that is bright yellow. The practice of applying turmeric paste on one’s face and body, prevalent among women of Tamil Nadu even today, as part of decking oneself up, is proof of this. I recall a Tamil film song in which the lyricist has the hero expressing his joy at the sight of the heroine with the line: ‘ Manjal mugame varuga ’! (Oh, welcome thou of yellow hue)

I suspect this had something to do with civilisational contacts with people of Chinese origin and their skin tone. A FICCI coffee-table book had hinted at such contacts between the people of Tamil Nadu and China, a couple of millennia earlier.

Of course, that has now changed with the colour ‘pink’ representing a notion of ‘fairness’ and hence of beauty. The advent of talcum powder was the first step in the changed notion of ‘fairness’. The Brits and the colonial influence might have altered public perceptions of ‘fairness’ in later years. The managers of Chesebrough-Ponds located their talcum powder factory in Chennai in the 1960s not because they liked the climate, but rather owing to a keenness to be close to the market. The talcum powder market then was and I should think even now, largely South Indian.

Tastes and fashions may change with time. But fascination with acquiring a complexion that is not native to one’s soil is a documented fact and will be with us forever. In its favour, it must be said that it is a harmless indulgence and marketers are merely pandering to that urge.

Why people should not be comfortable in their skins, in a manner of speaking, with what they come endowed with but must always seek to emulate the looks of another tribe is for psychologists and social anthropologists to ponder over. But to see in this eternal quest an attempt to offend the sensibilities of some sections of the community is taking notions of public decency and affront to the collective sensibility of society, to an altogether new height. This is most unfortunate.

We are living in a world where the sense of collective hurt is being constantly expanded as to narrow the space available for individuals to express themselves or indulge in doing things of their choice. Anybody who professes to represent a group not only has the unchallenged right to claim this, but must also be the sole arbiter of how the interests of such a group has been affected.

The world can certainly live without fairness creams and of course the freedom to communicate why these products should be coveted. But the manifestation of intolerance that the new voluntary ASCI code represents is a larger cause for worry.

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