Wednesday, December 15, 2010

Fair ain't Lovely

Does anyone remember the Morose Dad-Fairness Cream advertisement that used to come ages ago? Where poor daddy was upset over his dark girl (and coincidentally a born loser)? With a doomed career and no guy hitting on her, she had an awful-awful life. Until one day, when she acts super smart by mopping her face with a fairness cream and becomes a ‘Fair n Lovely’ air hostess (but factually speaking, being relatively the same dumbass that she was) and ushers her senti-mental parents to a 5 star hotel. Oh my God, such a happy ending, I feel like sobbing.

And guess what? The nation has evolved, and funnily enough now it’s the guys who are the dark-losers! But do they have to worry? Looks like they need not! Because here comes Mr. Saviour Khan, whose special formula uplifts their drowning sex appeal and viola helps them get the chick! ‘Clink’

So far so good. The only hiccup remains that for a country with a majority of dark-skinned people, the cultural idealization of light skin is full of irony!

Now, I don’t know if all rich and successful Indians have fair and squeaky-clean spotless skin. What I know is that I definitely fail to make it to the aforementioned spectrum. I ain’t fair, neither have I ever fancied to be! Now having said that, will it allow me to watch my TV peacefully for an hour without coming across at least one annoying advertisement that promises to make me a fairness queen?

And lastly, Mrs. Khan and Ms. Basu, don’t you think I should probably feel sad for both of you? For it would have been damn demoralizing and disheartening to see your man getting bitten by the fairness bug and not by your beauty skin deep.


2 comments:

zigzagtrail said...

Humm
We Indians are also racists in some sense and all these companies are banking on our weakness.

Fair != beautiful

Arpita said...

We certainly are..actually in many ways. Colour, language,rich-n-poor,cast and many many more to begin with.I reckon how many of us are actually literate out here!