International Shadeism in India

This image is a representation of the progression of skin-lightening. It has been used in Fair & Lovely advertisements and is present in many articles analyzing the idea of colourism and discrimination.

Shadeism, often referred to as “Colourism” is the preferential treatment of an individual based on their skin tone or colour. Shadeism often works in favour of ones with lighter skin tones and colour, and causes a wide spectrum of discrimination for those with darker skin colours. Individuals with darker skin tones become subject to mistreatment due to social meanings and misconceptions attached to their skin. Shadeism occurs between and within racial and ethnic groups. As a result, the discourse of shadeism becomes pivotal in changing the lives and shared experiences of people of colour globally.

History

"The colourism has become a part of the language. In Urdu and Hindi, the words for light skin are saaf rang meaning clean/pure whereas dark skin to referred to as mayla which translates into dirty. Light skin is so valued that it is the first 'quality' sought in a woman. Who set this standard?"

Colonization and its history have had a major impact on power dynamics globally. European colonization was arguably the most influential instance of white privilege worldwide and the colonial period perpetuated ideas of white superiority. Although white superiority itself and European power is a construct consisting of phenotypical hierarchy, it became internalized and impacted coloured people everywhere. European’s asserted a colour-based hierarchy in the colonies they took over. This can be seen in the instance where they invaded India. Their invasion created a hierarchy consisting of lighter individuals at the top, and those with darker skin tones at the bottom. Individuals with dark skin were associated with ugliness, inferiority, and savagery. Such power dynamics created long-lasting trauma, making individuals crave lighter complexion and associate skin colour with power and lack of power. This is what led to a long-lasting effect of colourism.

Globalizing the definition of beauty

In India, fairness is a goal that is commonly pursued through the use of harmful cosmetic products. If one were to ask someone from the western world about skin-lightening, they may commonly relate it to tanning and justify the practice. Although seemingly similar, tanning and skin-lightening are extremely different. Tanning is a practice that revolves around fads and the crave for summer and a sun-kissed body that is naturally associated with the season along with the happiness it brings. Skin-lightening however, has a far more complicated reason for its existence. Because of their colonial history with The British Empire, “in India, the words for fair and beautiful are synonymous”. Skin-lightening is a practice explained by many variables like “feminine discourses of beauty, and ‘whiteness’,” all stemming from contact with the Caucasian West and The British Empire. Tanning may be the same idea as both practices change the colour of one’s skin, but skin-lightening has a more complex history and present because of its rise to beauty ideals and feeling of inferiority it provides for India.

Division by the Caste System

The Caste system in India was originally implemented by Aryan Caucasians (around 1500 BCE), composed of the stereotypical ‘fair’, white empire that makes up the colonialism that Nadeem describes. The political control that The British Empire obtained over India caused a sense of false consciousness for citizens “to champion lighter-skinned groups as intelligent and martial and attractive, while dark-skinned people were portrayed as effeminate and dimwitted” . The Caste System relied on colour as a form of distinction which led to India’s false belief on the correlation between power and light skin.

The West & Skin

Western notions of beauty and desirability are currently in favour of white skin as well. Western ideologies along with Asian cultural values illustrate the power of lighter skin. In the West, it is perceived and even proven that people with lighter skin earn more money, are more educated, and attain higher marital status. Furthermore, lighter skin becomes a form of symbolic capital that is operated as economic capital, leading to an advantage in the ‘heterosexual market”. George Lipsitz(1998) coins the phrase ‘possessive investment in whiteness' as a description of how European Americans use whiteness to enhance secure economic advantages, and initiates as a metaphor in which ‘whiteness’ becomes currency. This currency exists invisibly while forcing racialized groups to compete for white approval. This approval could come from skin lightening, editing, and even avoidance of the sun.

Intersectionality & Shadeism

Skin colour and the global ideals of beauty and desirability favour people with lighter skin tones. Therefore lighter skin tones have come to be conceived as embodying beauty while darker skin tones are deemed undesirable. This could be described as racialized sexism as it is a product of the intersection of racism, sexism and being a woman of colour.

Shadeism and Women

Women in particular face challenges due to shadeism as it is often an intersection of sexism, further disempowering women of colour. Although shadeism is very relevant, it has yet to be explored in-depth as an issue from the feminist perspective. The hegemonic misconception of a ‘beautiful fair white woman’ still remains the overwhelming narrative of the 21st century. This is a result of the ongoing racism, colourism, and patriarchal ideals of desire and beauty. The privileging of lighter skin is a result of all of these mentioned intersections, making it a complex discourse.

Popular culture

Shadeism is very relevant in popular culture, media, and music where light skin is glorified, and dark skin is demonized . Celebrities of colour are often edited and modified to be lighter in magazines and advertisements. Most of these celebrities are women and social media platforms such as Instagram have become a place where these women can further filter, edit and showcase their light skin. Such filters often lighten your skin automatically, thus indirectly endorsing having lighter coloured skin. For instance, it was found that Indian women utilized a filter that lightened their skin in almost every photo they took of themselves before uploading them to social media. This is a product of the social meanings of attractiveness attached to lighter skin.

Vanity Fair

Vanity Fair has been subject to altering the skin colour of women in their magazines to be considerably lighter than she is. Lightening was used in almost every issue and women with overwhelmingly dark skin tones lacked publication. These results provide proof of the digital altering of women to appear lighter without their consent. The desire driven realm of popular culture perpetuates and maintains shadeism and thus women of colour come to lack representation. The editor of British Vogue, Alexandra Shulman, has stated that “the evidence suggests that black cover girls don’t sell as well as white cover girls”. Such statements can be disheartening to read as they state a clear implicit bias towards humans solely on the shade of their skin.

Unilever: Fair in North America, Unfair in India

"Fair & Lovely is a skin-lightening cosmetic product of Hindustan Unilever introduced to the market in India in 1975. Fair & Lovely is available in India, Bangladesh, Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore, Brunei, Thailand, Sri Lanka, Pakistan and other parts of Asia and is also exported to other parts of the world such as the West, where it is sold in Asian supermarkets."

Unilever is a multinational corporation which happens to own Dove, Fair & Lovely and Axe, all of which have controversial advertisements worldwide revolving around body image and desirability. It is no secret that beauty products are designed to endorse fixed ideas of beauty but to what extent? Unilever is directly contradicting themselves in different countries for their advantage and playing on the fact that some women in particular desire and think that they need to be lighter to attain a certain lifestyle. Dove is a well-known company in North America, famous for its promotion of positive body image and its famous “Real Beauty” ads which attempt to break the barriers of self-consciousness and fixed notions of beauty. Dove’s advertisements are widely accepted in North America as it has become an extremely multicultural and evolving continent with a lot of publications around body image and skin colour. Although Dove appears to be an advocate for natural beauty, their advertisements in India prove otherwise.

The Practice of Skin-Lightening

Skin-lightening has become a global phenomenon, By focussing on India for the purpose of analysis, one can see how a variety of chemically enhanced products become an overwhelming infatuation for a large population. Historical circumstances are what give fuel to this internalized desire of being whiter. Skin lightening is a prevalent practice in India and has been a product of their colonial past with Britain. “White skin” has emerged as a central necessity of consumer culture in affluent Asia. Women with more money have access to skin lightening and thus accumulate higher job positions and marital status. Asia embodies the beauty ideal of white skin and its power.

India & Skin-Lightening

When traveling to India one may notice the heavy commercialization of the popular product, Fair & Lovely. This product is the most successful skin-lightening product in India, which also happens to be the largest global market for skin-lightening products. There has been many studies and research conducted on the topic of skin-lightening and why its market continues to flourish despite the medical concerns attached to skin-lightening as well as the deeper issue of racism that comes along with it. Skin-lightening is still very prominent and accepted in regions like India. Although companies use India’s skin-lightening market as a major base to make a profit of this practice, skin-lightening is unethical to advertise as it has serious medical side effects and promotes internalized-racism. Companies like Unilever endorse their products in such a way that makes women believe they need them which leads them to want them, but what do they take into account when producing these products and advertisements? As previously mentioned, India is the world’s skin-lightening capital and it is not just Unilever who takes advantage of this, famous companies such as L’Oréal and Garnier do as well. Women in India have desired to be white or whiter for a long time and the root of this problem is what many researchers are curious to discover.

India: The Capital of Skin-Lightening

The capital of skin-lightening, India, has become the most vulnerable consumer for Unilever/Hindustan Unilever and any other company taking advantage of the desire to be ‘fair’ amongst the South Asians. The appetency to be ‘fair’ in India stems from a form of globalization revolving around exclusion. Shehzad Nadeem describes this as “the fairness fetish [which] pervades the job and marital markets and is deeply entwined with gender, class, and caste discrimination”. Because of these factors. Many South Asian women continue to purchase skin-lightening products as a way of fitting in and avoiding discrimination while becoming more suitable and desirable as companies like Fair & Lovely advertise. The growing wants to lighten one’s skin is one that has become crucible insecurity and western hegemony for India, “it is the flight for something pitied (darkness) and the chasing of something prized (fairness)” . Although the particular origins of colourism in India are unknown “It is popularly suggested that such prejudice predates colonialism” date back to around 1500 BCE.

The Practice of Skin-Lightening

Skin-lightening(bleaching) in this case, is defined as using cosmetics such as skin-lightening creams to lighten the colour of skin especially for women of darker skin colour. Some may argue that this practice is “fuelled by racial prejudice [that] stems from the misconceptions that black skin is inferior and that someone with fair skin is more attractive” . This could be seen as morally wrong as “cosmetics are meant to improve the appearance of the skin or enhance the attractiveness of users, not to alter the basic structure of the skin”. Since skin-lightening creams are solicited as cosmetics, they should actually be sold as drugs as they “alter the chemical structures of the skin by inhibiting the synthesis of melanin” .

Medical Implications of Skin-Lightening

Skin-lightening can be done in various ways such as using facial creams that work by reducing the melanin in the skin. Although seemingly harmless, these creams can have serious medical side effects as they contain harsh chemicals like Hydroquinone. In “Hydroquinone for skin lightening: Safety profile, duration of use and when should we stop?” Tsz Wah Tse focuses on Hydroquinone(HQ), a harmful skin-lightening agent that “is one of the most frequently used whitening products on the market”.  In 2006 skin-bleaching products that had not received FDA approval were to be banned as they were considered as misbranded and harmful . HQ is like many other skin-lightening agents as it is formulated to inhibit melanin production, melanin is the natural pigment that one is born with so tampering with its production can have serious side effects. Products including HQ “do not ‘bleach the skin’ but gradually suppress melanin pigment production” causing the skin to lighten as a result. If using these products becomes a form of prolonged application, prolonged exposure may result in exogenous ochronosis(EO), which can have side effects such as hyper-pigmentation and “mild pigmentation of the body, face, neck, upper chest, and upper back” . Despite the research and proof presented and HQ’s harmful side effects “15 million tubes of skin-lightening formulations containing HQ are [still] sold annually".

Conclusion

Ethical Considerations

The advertising and profitable world created around skin-lightening is a pervasive form of ‘othering’ in India and around the world. Although the western world now encourages multiculturalism and inclusivity, countries like India may not and companies like Unilever monopolize this. Even mainstream media in the US “depict[s] skin lightening as emblematic of Indian ‘otherness [and a] part of a contradictory set of representations about post-liberalization between its growing relationships with the United States” . The British Empire began envy of power from India and powerful countries like the US are continuing it. “India’s symbolic proximity to the United States has increased in the last three decades” while also symbolically replacing The British Empire. Because of this, the historic and current ideas of power in India have been falsely attached to ‘whiteness’. The constant exposure to this false consciousness and control over India has caused internalized racism that is seemingly inescapable and this is apparent because companies like Fair & Lovely continue to grow and exist. The internalized racism created among India’s citizens further translates to an “inability to move forward and achiever full political modernity [which] is exemplified in its continual attachment to racial/ethnic/colour-based differences” . Skin-lightening is a practice that is a locus due to its “association with racism and social inequalities and the expanding emerging market influence”.

Despite the proof of harm and medical side-effects, skin-lightening has become extremely potent in India. Ethical concerns accompany these implications as skin-lightening stems from a sense of envy and false consciousness by further contributing to internalized racism for people in India. Skin-lightening companies like Fair & Lovely use the vulnerability created by the complex history of the desire for lighter skin in India for profits and control. Through an ethnocentric lens, it may be hard for North Americans to acknowledge the serious implications that skin-lightening has for women in India. In order for the negativity surrounding skin-lightening practices to be exposed, this issue must be widely publicized and companies like Utilizer should be further regulated.