Selling promises...

Every time I switch on the TV, I come across at least a dozen channels showing commercials for fairness creams. There are all sorts of creams but they all have a common premise. They guarantee to make you fairer and thus more desirable whether as a prospective bride or a model or an air-hostess or an actress or even as an on-air reporter. The advertisements don’t sell mere fairness creams ,they sell the promise of a successful life.
In one particular case, a plain girl is shown as been distraught because her father who used to be the make-up man to stars but who is now too old, is being insulted by some tantrum-throwing diva. She gets upset and keeps yelling at her father saying he should make her beautiful and then she would get somewhere in life and be able to take care of him. He gives her a ‘Fair and Lovely’ cream and thus she becomes beautiful and manages to become an actress and is shown thanking her father at the awards function where she gets her first award. This entire advertisement was so ridiculous that I didn’t know whether to laugh or fume! The idea that only beautiful women can support their parents, that only a fair girl can be termed beautiful and that a fairness cream can be a ticket to lasting success is completely bizarre and yet in some way pathetic because there is a huge segment that actually falls for this brand of selling and fuels the market thus paving the way for the entry of more fairness creams and more stupid advertising.
There is no regulation that stops these ads from portraying the creams as a cure-all for every ugliness (which in India is usually defined by a dark complexion). There doesn’t seem to be any information presented in small print that mentions that the claims made are completely phoney. Indeed so deep an impression do these commercials make that even my former live-in maid who was as dark as the night, faithfully bugged me to get these creams for her insisting that they must work otherwise it would never be on TV! She obviously did not get fairer and managed to get quite a crop of pimples as the result of overenthusiastic application of the creams she swore by.
The craze to be fair is evident everywhere you look in India. Matrimonial advertisements (which are so hilarious, they deserve an article all to themselves!) always say the girl (who could be 40 yet is termed a girl till she marries) is fair and beautiful. If one is to go by these statements, the entire country would appear to be inundated by fair, slim and beautiful women who should, theoretically have no difficulty in finding themselves a groom which is hardly the case. Unfortunately, the boys (yes, they could be 40 too!) want only pale, white girls and so the unlucky dusky girls get left behind and have to settle for whatever they get.
I even saw a commercial for a men’s fairness cream the other day – called ‘Fair and Handsome’ being endorsed by a famous Bollywood personality! I guess even girls have started asserting their rights and prefer fair boys. I suppose it will be a fairness cream for babies next – after all who wants dark babies? And why not start young and fuel the madness for light skin even more! You can never be too young for fairness...