Hey, maybe this is just too much attention on one issue but I found this too interesting to ignore. Dove, as we’ve seen here and here, is the creator of some very interesting ads that challenge mainstream ideas of beauty.
In India, writes Munisha Tumato for Vancouver’s Mehfil magazine, Dove’s parent company is taking a different approach. Unilever is staging a massive campaign to promote their skin whitening product, shamefully dubbed “Fair and Lovely.”
This is so offensive I don’t even know what to say. It is problematic on so many levels, globalisation, colonialism, racism, sexism…the list goes on. I invite you to read Tumato’s original article and tell Shameless what you think.
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six comments
By the by, I just learned recently that the number one selling cosmetic product in the skin world is - wait for it - skin whitener.
This shocked and appalled me, especially as I had never even heard of these creams until a month ago. From what I understand, they are especially big business in Japan and India, where paler complexions are associated with higher status. This is particularly true of India, where the caste system still has enormous influence, and families with darker complexions tend to rank lower down on the social ladder.
Posted by Zoe
October 19, 2007, 11:53 AM
Here is an ad for Fair and Lovely. Quite a bit different from the Dove ads we get over here.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NKEF-8...
Posted by Nicole
October 19, 2007, 5:23 PM
Oh that ad made me sad. I hoped at least the young woman would, like, head-butt the beauty agency lady and be all "That's what you get for perpetuating Caucasian-centric beauty standards! Now my newly-whitened face and I are off to begin a career in mime!" or something. But no.
Posted by Anna
October 19, 2007, 7:25 PM
Skin whiteners are also quite popular in East Asia. I've noticed that in Hong Kong at least, it's partly a desire to be white and partly a desire not to look Philippino. (There are a large number of Philippine migrants who work as maids for middle-class families.)
Posted by Julia
October 20, 2007, 9:39 AM
Having grown up in Southeast Asia, where skin whiteners were a totally normal part of the cosmetics counter, I guess I'm torn on this. Yeah, it is horrible that Anglo ideals of beauty dominate to such a radical extreme. I have lots of South Asian friends who talk about this often, and how much the way of thinking "dark = bad" affects how they see themselves and their own beauty, even though they know that it's an absurd way to think.
At the same time this imposed ideal of beauty is now an actual, genuine part of culture in Asia as well as diasporic non-Anglo cultures in the western world - including double eyelid surgery for East Asian women, and blonde/straightened hair for Black women in North America. And criticising others cultural practices, even when the values that underlie them are clearly oppressive, is a hot mess that feminism has wandered into too many times.
My point is that when we think and talk about this issue, it's more useful to think clearly about, and mention often, the centuries of oppression and colonisation that created them, rather than solely express horror at individual examples and individual women who practice these kinds of beauty regimes.
I also think it's more constructive to think about how we benefit from these ideals if we are light-skinned, and what we're gonna do about it.
Posted by Thea
October 20, 2007, 10:34 AM
Good points, Thea. But I think the criticism here is aimed more at Unilever for producing this disturbing commercial than at the women who use this product, whatever their motivations might be. Unilever's tack may in part be reflecting the desires of individual women to be light-skinned, or a larger cultural undercurrent that prizes paleness, but like any ad, it produces desire as much as it recognizes it.
Posted by Anna
October 20, 2007, 4:06 PM
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