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A Billion-Strong Colorist Nation & the Billion-Dollar “Fair Skin” Industry

Did Unilever shape the “light skin fetish” or simply exploit it?

Pranshu "Maverick" Dwivedi
6 min readJan 9, 2022
Image source: Adam Jones / Flickr CC by 2.0

Unilever — one of the global consumer giants recently rebranded one of its flagship Indian products — a skin-lightening cream that has been a household name for decades.

The cream called “Fair & Lovely” was rebranded to “Glow & Lovely” after persistent criticism for promoting harmful society standards and preference for light skin.

To understand India’s obsession with fair skin — you must first understand the extent of it and how deep-rooted and harmful this obsession is.

India is a more colorist nation than America or any other part of the world is racist.

Fair, slim and beautiful girl wanted for…

When I was growing up and becoming aware of societal preferences, and starting to form opinions of my own, I was in my mid to late teens back in the 90’s and early 2000’s. My sister and I would grab the weekend classifieds newspaper and laugh at and be astonished by the demands Indian men and their families had for their prospective brides.

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Pranshu "Maverick" Dwivedi
Pranshu "Maverick" Dwivedi

Written by Pranshu "Maverick" Dwivedi

Stay-at-home-dad who "retired" from a 12-year career in finance at the age of 35. Curious thinker with an opinion on nearly everything and is here to share it.

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