Beauty Products That Embrace Racism

I think it’s right that Johnson & Johnson have arrived at a decision to stop selling skin-whitening creams popular in Asia. 

Their products have come under renewed social pressure in recent weeks amid an increasing strident global debate about racial inequality. 

Already, they are discontinuing their Neutrogena Fine Fairness line. And a company spokesperson told Reuters on Friday they will cease selling their Clean & Clear Fairness products in India too. 

The healthcare company said they would no longer produce or ship the products, but that they might still appear on store shelves until stocks run out. 

India is said to be one of the fastest growing markets for skin-whitening soaps and cream. The "fairness" (an euphemism for "whiteness" really) market generates sales of $432 million and it is growing annually by 17 percent. 

And Unilever's Fair and Lovely skin whitening cream has the largest share of the cosmetic market in India. Their commercials carry a makeover narrative that depicts dark-skinned women transforming into light-skinned women will indeed spawn success in romance and careers.

The skin-whitening market that includes Garnier's White Complete, L'Oréal's White Perfect, and Ponds' White Beauty recruit light-skinned Bollywood superstars – the likes of Priyanka Chopra, Aishwarya Rai, and Hrithik Roshan – to sell fantasies of epidermal transformation as the basis for a happy and rewarding life. 

All the world’s biggest personal care companies, including Unilever, Procter & Gamble and L’Oreal under their respective brands Fair & Lovely, Olay and Garnier are hawking lotions that promise to lighten (or brighten) skin. 

According to Quartz, this is a $10-billion-dollar global skin-lightening market that aggressively peddles dozens of high- and low-end skin-lightening products to consumers in Asia and Africa. 

Whether we care to admit it or not, these products only serve to reinforce the flighty notion that fair skin is the beauty standard. A perfect life from perfect skin – but only for those of the ‘right’ (read, ‘fair’) shade – is the message and mindset that’s being communicated to the world. 

This has created a multibillion-dollar industry in cosmetic creams and invasive procedures such as skin bleaching, chemical peels, laser treatments, steroid cocktails, “whitening” pills and intravenous injections – all with varying effectiveness and health risks. 

It’s more than a bias, it’s a downright dangerous cultural obsession. 

Sunil Bhatia (right), a professor of human development at Connecticut College, USA, in his piece about deep-rooted internalised racism and social hierarchies based on skin color published on April 17, 2017 in US News & World Report said emphatically: “This is not bias. This is racism”. 

This darker skin stigma, and rigid cultural perception that correlates lighter skin tone with beauty and “personal success” is wrong! 

And I blame it on the Western media's dominance across the world where they preach "whiteness" as an idealized image and which has become transnational. 

The fact that the non-white population embraces it so readily is really sad and hard to swallow because it means they are ever willing to surrender their self-respect and dignity as persons of “color”.