If you could change the colour of your skin, would you? From matrimonial sites to the advertisement on television, it seems the collective conscious of our society has decided that any skin colour other than fair is inherently inferior. Even worse, we are actively trying to prove that there is something fundamentally wrong in being a possessor of a skin tone that lies on the darker spectrum.

After all, does it even shock anyone that India has a booming $450 million fairness cream industry, with Hindustan Unilever’s ‘Fair-and-Lovely’ being the flag bearer of this hypocrisy, based on your skin tone. But this whole circus just doesn’t stop here, according to research, the whitening cream industry is expanding at an alarming rate of 18% per year, mainly due to the involvement of Bollywood big shots in its endorsement.

The ill-conceived notion that having a lighter skin automatically correlates to racial superiority and financial power can be traced back to the 15th-century BC when the light-skinned Aryans established a system that allowed them to become the aristocracy and the Dravidians were forced to slavery.

While across the other half of the globe, people are running after means to acquire tan skins, we are still entrenched in our bias of lighter skin equaling to a brighter (no pun intended) future. Our deeply in seated hypocrisy is evident from the fact that the moment a dark-skinned girl is born her “relatives” start recommending methods to brighten her skin. Hardly anyone of us has not been privy to a thousand and one homemade remedies that will either make us ‘pretty and fair’ or ‘keep our skin colour light’. The question we need to ask ourselves is, why does it matter to us what the colour of our skin is?

However, it seems even men are being sold this false narrative of a fairer complexion appealing the other sex. The notion of, ‘tall, dark, and handsome’ is quickly giving way to ‘fair and handsome’. While people everywhere bear the brunt of such nonsensical preconceptions, it is companies like Emami and Garnier which cash in on the insecurities and laugh their way to the bank. 

Advertisements play a huge role in propagating harmful ideas as such to a wide range of audience. When you see your favourite movie star on your screen, slathering those fairness creams on their faces and promising to give you ‘up to two tones of fairer skin’, it does tempt one to try it out. But, what kind of message does it broadcast? Is darker skin some kind of affliction that needs to be corrected using beauty ‘treatments’?

However, people have been reacting to this skewed representation of people of colour in the media. Perhaps the most memorable movement against the fairness industry was ‘Unfair and Lovely’, a social media campaign, which started in Austin, Texas by a student, Pax Jones. “Our goal was to combat colourism and the under-representation of people of colour in the media”, she told BBC at that time.

Yet even with this backlash, the industry is facing (Yami Gautam facing criticism for continuing to advertise for Fair and Lovely), and the awareness among people of the detrimental damage caused by fairness industry, they continue to grow. This is probably why, according to a recent report by Global Industry Analysts, the industry will only continue to grow, mushrooming into a $23.75 billion goliath by 2020. 

It now lies only in our hands, to prevent the subtle manipulation of the insecurities and rigid stereotypes, at the hands of the fairness industry, for their capitalist gains.