Double standards of advertising

When I first came to the United States five years ago, I started noticing the great publicity certain ad campaigns were getting in this country. One such example was Dove and its parent company, Unilever. Dove had started two campaigns: The Real Beauty Campaign and the Pro-Age Campaign. The Real Beauty campaign celebrated women, no matter what they looked like, and encouraged women to love the way they looked, irrespective of their body type.

The other campaign, the Pro-Age campaign was to show that women over the age of 50 were beautiful too. These campaigns are great and I think there should be more campaigns like them. However, one thing really, really annoys me. Two words- Double Standards.

The same company, Unilever, has a very different definition of beauty in Asian countries. In India, Unilever manufactures products such as Fair and Lovely and Ponds White Beauty. These are skin lightening products and the commercials show that if one is not fair, one is not beautiful.

They don't just stop there. The commercials go on to show that if one is dusky or dark skinned, she will never find love, will not get a job and she will not be successful in anything she does.

The commercials usually start off by showing a girl who is really dark and really unhappy with her life (most of these women are not that dark in my opinion, but the producers of the commercial obviously think otherwise). She usually admires a man who shows no interest in her and that makes her even more unhappy. Then the girl's mother gives her a tube of Fair and Lovely and tells her that she will get a "pinkish-white" glow by using this and her life will essentially change. The girl then uses the cream and from a dark brown skinned girl she suddenly becomes really light skinned. Of course, the commercials end with the boy falling in love with her, or the girl getting the job of her dreams, or husband, or something she has greatly desired.

I think these commercials are ludicrous and the worst part is, Fair and Lovely makes millions in sales. This product is one of the highest sold products in India, China, Malaysia, Thailand and other Asian countries.

Products such as Fair and Lovely promote racism in a way, arguing that one cannot be dark and beautiful, or capable of doing a good job, and honestly they don't even work. I have seen my friends use this product, convincing themselves that they have indeed become lighter by applying it, and to be honest, I see no change at all.

I think Fair and Lovely is actually very unfair and ugly because it makes women dislike the way they look. In India, the general conception of beauty is that which is equivalent to fair skin. That concept is so idiotic. I saw this everyday of my life when I lived in India. Lighter skinned girls got the boys, or they were more popular in school, Bollywood is filled with mostly light skinned actors and the news anchors are mostly "fair and lovely." I wouldn't stand a chance of becoming an anchor in India myself because I am not light skinned and I don't wish to be.

Products such as these reinforce that belief. It makes me so angry to see those commercials. What makes me even angrier is the double standards applied by the companies that manufacture these products. How, I ask, is it right to promote the Real-Beauty campaign in one country, and in another country, tell people they are ugly because they are dark? That in my opinion is a complete ethical temptation.