White Skin Racism
Lebanese Maid Racism
Caster Semenya - racism?
Swiss Racism Redux
Israeli Racism Against Black Jews
Is White ideal?
Since when did it become socially acceptable to advertise White skin is the ideal image of beauty? Consider the case of the Indian cosmetics 'Fair and Lovely' and 'Fair and Handsome' lines:
These two products encourage use in order to lighten the skin tone of olive skinned Indians. And only such Whitter or 'fair' skin is 'lovely ' for a woman or the image of 'handsome' for a man. This is explicit racism! The obvious implication is that darker skinned people are plagued with unattractive skin tones and that only imitating Westerns will lead to beauty. That White is the ideal and that all people in the world should worship the White Man's image of beauty. This is, unfortunate, for two reasons 1) it is racism 2) but, secondly and worse, it embeds an inferiority complex into Indians and anyone other people made to feel by firms and advertisers that they need to Whiten their skin. That's because no Indian will never be mistaken for a European no matter the excessive use of 'Fair and Lovely' for, although it may work as advertised in Whitening skin relatively, it is ... relative to a skin tone that will remain unmistakable non-White and olive. So that, say, Indian who is made to feel that she/he needs such a product will always feel not White enough and feel insecure around Whites and harbor an inferiority complex toward Westerns. And all this because of her/his skin tone? I thought he were past this age of judging people by the "color of their skin [and not] by the content of their character." I thought we had gotten over making valued judgments on skin tone and that the enlightened thing was to judge people for who they are.
People should not be made to idolize a certain skin complexion, but feel confident for who they are and how they look and appreciate that beauty comes in many colors. This bottle does not embed people with beauty confidence, but undermines their respect and confidence in themselves as they seek to reach a standard they are incapable of ever actually reaching. The standard should be taking confidence in one's own appearance.
This racist Indian brand (which has its counterpart in the Arab world and maybe elsewhere) is now being replicated by an American firm which encourages the same inferiority complex toward Whites:
Skincare group Vaseline has introduced a skin-lightening application for Facebook in India, enabling users to make their skin whiter in their profile pictures.
For shame!
