Ads tout lighter skin for romance, power and employment

[Blueberry_raspberry]

Telling India’s Modern Women They Have Power, Even Over Their Skin Tone

By HEATHER TIMMONS
Published: May 30, 2007

NEW DELHI, May 29 — The modern Indian woman is independent, in charge — and does not have to live with her dark skin.

Men, too, are targets. In this commercial, a man lands a beautiful woman after he uses a male version of Fair and Lovely from Unilever.
That is the message from a growing number of global cosmetics and skin care companies, which are expanding their product lines and advertising budgets in India to capitalize on growth in women’s disposable income. A common thread involves creams and soaps that are said to lighten skin tone. Often they are peddled with a “power” message about taking charge or getting ahead.

Avon, L’Oréal, Ponds, Garnier, the Body Shop and Jolen are selling lightening products and all of them face stiff competition from a local giant, Fair and Lovely, a Unilever product that has dominated the market for decades.

Full article here:

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/30/business/media/30adco.html?_r=1&em&ex=1180670400&en=8cec2e1cf447bd89&ei=5087%0A&oref=slogin

Fair and Lovely, with packaging that shows a dark-skinned unhappy woman morphing into a light-skinned smiling one, once focused its advertising on the problems a dark-skinned woman might face finding romance. In a sign of the times, the company’s ads now show lighter skin conferring a different advantage: helping a woman land a job normally held by men, like announcer at cricket matches. “Fair and Lovely: The Power of Beauty,” is the tagline on the company’s newest ad.

[Kiouni]

1. welcome berry!

There seems to be no stopping the vanity industry. Japanese women are having their eyes "rounded," and everyone is trying to turn into the same quasi-tanned calvin klein underwear model. Don't people ever get tired of being insecure?

[Blueberry_raspberry]

3. media shows one image of beauty - Thin, young, european

Thanks for the welcome.

[Karenina]

23. And another Howdy Doo!!!

Welcome!!! :hi:

[Blueberry_raspberry]

24. Thanks!

:pals:

[truedelphi]

2. Some of the lightening packages sold to the poorer of these women

End up causing a skin condition called vitaligo - which is where the body "sheds" the natural skinpigment for skin that has NO pigment.

This makes it impossible to be out in the sun for more than a few minutes without sunburn.

Vitaligo lightens the skin in patches - so you certainly would not have an advantage in terms of romance and improving your appearance. Instead you look like you have giant freckles.

[Blueberry_raspberry]

5. Irony is that Dove co - with it's 'real beauty' campaign is biggest seller of lightening products

From article

"Unilever’s Fair and Lovely brand has drawn particular scrutiny because of its market dominance, its ads and the parent company’s image. Unilever also makes Dove products, whose “Real Beauty” campaign encourages women in the United States and Europe to embrace the way they look. This month, Unilever said it would ban super-skinny models from ads."

[JCMach1]

4. Indian men use it too! I get my haircut @ a Pakistani barber and always get a dose of fair

and lovely when they finish! or Tibet snow, or any of the 100's of useless fairness creams.

The irony... I have always been fishbelly pale... I still get the treatment!

The creams are the equivalent of tanning products in American society except perhaps even more popular.

The other thing the Indian beauty industry is obsessed with is hair. There are so many hair treatments that it's crazy.

There is a point to that though as the sun, heat, and dust tend to damage hair and scalp. I regularly use oil (shee butter) to help with that.

[diane in sf]

46. keeping your hair oily also kills the head lice!

[Blueberry_raspberry]

6. "Only white is beautiful."

Fair is lovely in Bihar's heart of darkness

Patna, May 17: Hundreds of weddings are being solemnised in Bihar's traditional marriage season in summer called 'lagan', but many dark complexioned boys and girls - especially the latter - are finding themselves spurned.

In one incident this month, a young woman was killed by her in-laws for her dark complexion while another saw a girl being forced into marriage she refused to tie the knot with a boy for not being fair.

http://www.newkerala.com/news5.php?action=fullnews&id=30201

[Matariki]

7. This is sad - though it reminds me of a Hindu story

Shiva is teasing his wife Parvati (who is also Kali) about her dark completion and she goes off for a thousand years to do spiritual austerities to lighten her skin. She returns a Gauri - the golden one.

So what I'm saying is this isn't new to Indian culture - this myth is very old.

[Blueberry_raspberry]

8. Don't mean to put down Indians - focus is on Unilever

I found info showing Unilever (DOVE) pushes the skin lightening stuff all over the world. Old prejudices aren't allowed to die if commercials imply that life is better with light skin.

Here they are 'empowering' women in Bangladesh.

http://www.financialexpress-bd.com/index3.asp?cnd=5/18/2007§ion_id=7&newsid=61438&spcl=no

Fair and Lovely Foundation continues its mission to empower local women
FE Report
5/18/2007

Fair and Lovely Foundation (FLF) has been continuing its mission to economically empower the Bangladeshi women through the Supplementary Education Programme (SEP) for the third consecutive year.

[Matariki]

10. I didn't think you were putting Indians down.

your post just made me think of that story and I think the light skin thing is ingrained in the culture - not just a new wanna-be an anglo thing. But for sure commercials are playing on that cultural thing. I guess some skin lightening cream is easier than a thousand years of austerities...

[JCMach1]

9. Exactly... the difference is now globalized companies are taking advantage of this

The Indian middle-class has become heavily globalized... preferring western products to traditional Indian ones. Here in Dubai (the best city in India) many Indians fall prey to the mall culture and reject many aspects of their own culture.

I find this quite sad...

[JI7]

11. just because it's culture doesn't mean it should keep happening

the skin lightening thing is an example of this. yes it is in the indian(or rather south asian) culture that fair is more attractive with people putting themselves at health risks to do it.

this is why you have disgusting actresses like Kareena Kapoor who is not very attractive thinking she is hotter or beautiful just because she is light skinned than someone with dark skin like Bipasha Basu.

pic of Kareena



pic of Bipasha

[liberaldemocrat7]

12. Both women look attractive to me.

They both look attractive, to me.



SHOP AT ZAZZLE.COM FOR MUGS, STAMPS, BUMPER STICKERS AND MORE.

[JCMach1]

13. Then you got the point! People tend to forget that India, or Indian is not a single thing

Since independence, North Indian Hindus have largely dominated the politics and virtually everything else in the country. North Indian Hindus (typically Aryan descendants) tend to be lighter than most South Indians such as Keralites, Goans, or people from Andra-Pradesh and other South States...

It also generally applies to Caste as well... Dalits and lower Castes typically are darker than the higher castes.

This is such a huge problem that thousands of Dalits coverted to Buddhism just this week:

...In a move that may have a long-term effect on national politics, thousands of tribals and Dalits converted to Buddhism at a massive gathering in Mumbai on Sunday, to escape the rigid Hindu caste system. Though the number of people present at Mahalaxmi Race Course was a little less than the expected figure of 100,000, it was definitely one of the biggest mass conversions in modern Indian history. In the past few years, thousands of Dalits and tribals have converted to Buddhism in different parts of the country, a move seen by political observers as an assertion of their identity that is influencing politics in a big way.
India's Times of India newspaper reported that buses loaded with Dalits and tribals began on Sunday to roll into the grounds surrounded by glass-and-steel highrises in the country’s financial hub. Men, women and children from 42 different castes brought to Mumbai by Dalit writer Laxman Mane sat quietly throughout the day waiting for the moment they would be initiated into Buddhism. By evening, their number had swelled to at least 50,000.
Speeches by Buddhist leaders like Rahul Bodhi marked the occasion which initiated hundreds of new converts into the Buddhist fold. Organised by Babasaheb Ambedkar Pratishthan, the rally was just not a simple religious ceremony, it was also a show of strength by Maharashtra’s Dalit leader, Ramdas Athawale, who time and again is at loggerheads with other leaders in the country to claim Ambedkar’s true legacy.
Although the Tibetan spiritual leader Dalai Lama, who was supposed to lead the ‘‘largest religious conversion in modern India’’, could not make it to the ceremony, there was a huge gathering of Buddhist monks in their maroon robes from different parts of India, as well as from other countries. And, the absence of the world’s best-known Buddhist monk did not dampen the spirits of the people taking refuge in Buddhism as a symbol of turning their backs on caste discrimination and oppression... http://worldsikhnews.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=630&Itemid=29

[JI7]

14. caste isn't really skin color based

people from the same geographic area are split up into different castes.

the only problem among conversions is that stupid hindu fanatics have a problem with the conversions themselves but do or care nothing to change the conditions that force people to want to do it. not that it should change because of conversions but beacuse it's the right thing to do.

[Matariki]

37. Maybe not, but the ability to be indoors as opposed to working the fields is

and there are apparently many references in the Vedas to skin tone, praising 'fair skin' over dark skin. Some scholars speculate that a lot of the stories in the Vedas are a reference to invading Aryans. I guess history repeats itself - in terms of cultural invasion in this case.

[jmowreader]

42. Bipasha isn't all that dark

Either Bipasha's picture is way overlit (possible--her nose is blown out, and I KNOW she's got makeup on it) or she's light-skinned and being photographed with an 85C warming filter on the lens.

Now...I know some dark-skinned Indians who are seriously dark--as in Saharan African dark.

Kareena? Completely unattractive.

[JI7]

45. it's the flash

many indians look lighter on camera because of the flash.

but just focus on the facial details. Bipasha is far more attractive than Kareena no matter what skin tone they have.

[jmowreader]

48. Bipasha is more attractive than 90-95 percent of Americans

She's a beautiful woman, but someone (who probably most Indian people don't think is all that hot) saying "I'm prettier than Bipasha is because I'm lighter"? Oh my.

[Blueberry_raspberry]

49. For some the paleness of the skin is considered a major aspect of beauty.

Some can't see the beauty if the skin is dark.

[krispos42]

60. I like the face of Bipasha; however....

before I get flamed, I'll note that the picture quality and settings are totally different. The top one looks like paparazzi, the bottom by a studio photographer. Lighting is totally different in temperature, diffusion and intensity. Airbrushing Bipasha's pic is also a possibility expressly because it is a studio picture.

[intheflow]

21. Not sure you can draw a parallel here.

There is a difference between being golden in ancient mythology and being white/light in a contemporary global context.

Also, Parvati is only one aspect of Kali, and the myth does not destroy Parvati's blackness, but transforms into another entity, Kausiki along with the newly golden Parvati. Indian myth also says that Krishna was born from Gauri, who turned black after being struck by Kama (kind of a Hindu cupid figure). In both cases, creation is born out of blackness, not out of whiteness or golden-ness. In the contemporary context, Unilever is saying that creation (new jobs) will come form whiteness. It's very counter-cultural to indigenous Indian mythology.

[Matariki]

33. Myths operate on many levels

and of course your interpretation is the deeper level. Although as I understand it Kali is an aspect of Parvati ;-)

*But* in the myth Shiva is teasing Parvati for her dark complexion and unless I'm mistaken this *was* commonly understood as a jibe in Hindu culture.

BTW Krisha was born of Devaki, not Gauri. I have never seen a story where Gauri is turned black by Kama? Kama is burnt by Shiva's eye when he trys to shoot an arrow at Shiva. Parvati's sons are Ganesha and the warrior god Kartikeya or Skanda. This is a topic dear to my heart.

Unilever is doing what most corporations do and tailoring their advertising to a culture's insecurities and so forth. The desire for lighter skin, I believe, has existed for quite a while.

[Matariki]

36. ps - this all has it's roots in India's caste system, both the commercial and the myth

I found an Indian woman's blog writing about this commercial and how the desire for lighter skin is deeply rooted in the culture: http://www.beliefnet.com/story/145/story_14568_1.html

[treestar]

15. I live for the day when people don't fall for this kind of shit

It is amazing how similar different cultures are, too. It may be different issues, but it's still the same message - women are not good enough as they are, and they must buy something to improve themselves.

[Berry Cool]

16. You said it, treestar

and as a fellow Berry, I welcome Blueberry_raspberry to DU.

[siligut]

17. Backlash may be our new best friend!

I saw a bit of "the day", maybe it is a backlash. Was at the produce department, hunting for dinner and following behind a person who obviously wanted some attention for general augmentations. I saw in the eyes of would be admirers, a very distinct will to not pay much mind.

[intheflow]

20. India was colonized by the Brits.

This is not a different culture issue, it's the same issue. India has been so heavily influenced--barraged by--by Western ideals of beauty to have internalized the same message: whiteness is rightness, and women need improvement. :puke:

[smirkymonkey]

53. Exactly. In our culture, most women try to make their skin darker

by tanning or by using products that make them look tan. If we have straight hair we try to make it curly and if we have curly hair we try to make it straight. No matter what country a woman lives in, the message is always the same: The way you look is never good enough.

[intheflow]

18. K&R. Here's my letter to Unilever:

I read today in the New York Times that Unilever has been marketing a product in India called "Fair and Lovely" which alleges to give Indian women fairer skin. I find this disturbing for several reasons. First, it is an overtly racist assumption that women need to be lighter skinned in order to be beautiful. Secondly, it is hypocritical that Unilever is the parent company of Dove, the company known for it's "Real Beauty" campaign. Finally, I am deeply disturbed that "Fair and Lovely" is not included on Unilever's "Cant' Find It" product list; I had to go to the Hindustan Lever Limited web site to confirm it was a real product. That strikes me as deceptive and misleading in light of the Times article.

I have used Dove products for years, and have been proudly circulating Dove's "Campaign for Real Beauty" online video showing how the advertising industry manipulates images to sell a product. That is an excellent video. But now I am the one to feel manipulated by Unilever into believing Dove was actually concerned about women.

I understand "Fair and Lovely" is one of the first Indian products to identify and target the whitening ideal of beauty, and as such, is a leader in the market. However, I urge you to consider phasing it out by developing another product, perhaps titled something like "Beautiful You," and market it aggressively to become the market leader in what is bound to be a backlash trade in natural beauty products. Publicly setting on such a path would restore my faith in the Dove beauty line.

I actually don't write a lot of letters to manufacturers; in fact, this may be the first one in over a decade. But I hope this NYT article brings a firestorm unto Unilever!

Edited to add: Welcome to DU, Blueberry! :hi:

[Blueberry_raspberry]

25. Wonderful letter - I too was sucked in by the Dove "real beauty" campaign

Corporate bastards.

I will contact Unilever also.

Thanks for the welcome. Friendly group here. Other groups would be flaming me
for violating some obscure rule by now.

[Cabcere]

19. Damn...

For a second I thought this was going to be one of those "pale is the new tan" things, which would've been much better. This is just sick. :(

And welcome to DU, Blueberry_raspberry! :hi: Great to have you here, and thanks for sharing this article. I'll be looking forward to more posts from you in the future! :hi:

[Blueberry_raspberry]

27. Yeah, it is sick. Is this 2007 or 1907?

Saw a 20/20 or something similar about people from all races trying to European their looks.. there was an young asian man who had cosmetic surgery and blond hair, A black woman who married a white man so her children would look "more white" and such. Painful!

Thanks for the welcome. :-)

[intheflow]

22. kick

[Nikki Stone1]

26. They have our jobs...now they have our obsession with whiteness...

The price you pay for outsourcing,

[Catherine Vincent]

28. Well they had to choose "Fair and Lovely"...

"Dark and Lovely" is already taken. :)

[bleedingheart]

29. The companies are taking advantage of the cultural colorism practices

I worked at a company years ago with an American woman who married an Indian guy....He was at first really frightened about telling his parents about his "love match"...this was some 30 + years ago...so they were married but told none of his family until a visit from a relative who then went home and blabbed...

They didn't like that she wasn't Hindu...

but she told me that when her kids were born and they visited India for the first time to see grandma...etc...that her mother in law instantly forgave her the lack of being a Hindu because her kids were "so beautiful and light skinned"...

My friend was really creeped out by this but then explained to me that a lot of Indian women spent a lot of time trying to lighten their skin...which she thought was funny since she was a light skinned person of Irish/English descent who always wanted to be tan but would only turn bright pink and fade back to pasty white...so it appears people are never happy with who they are...

I think the practice is awful...but how does it end??...look at the gals who puke themselves into a size zero...

[Scout1071]

30. This is common throughout all of Asia.

In Asian culture, the lighter the skin, the more affluent you appear. If you have darker skin, it means that you work outside and are of "lower class".

If you visit Hong Kong, you will see that skin bleaching and lightening creams are some of the top selling beauty products in HK. Also, you would notice that the HK residents that live in HK proper are much lighter skinned than their country counterparts.

[GreenPartyVoter]

35. Very true, although tanning salons are now starting to show up there as western ideals take hold. I

saw a show on, I think it was China, where the skin lightening salons owners they interviewed were simply appalled by the wave of local tanned super power CEOs who shunned their services. Rather intriguing.

[Matariki]

39. I think this is rooted in class and agriculture

The same used to be true in Europe and America. If you were wealthy you could spend you time sheltered in doors, if you were a regular person you were out in the fields working and getting darker skin for it.

Now if you're wealthy you can fly to Palm Springs in the middle of winter and get a tan playing golf. A fact that drives women to tanning beds in winter.

[Blue_Tires]

31. very sad...nt

[angstlessk]

32. We white people plump our lips and tan our bodies to be more

like Africans..and still think white is beautiful??? I will never understand humans as long as I live..and I am one!

[Matariki]

38. Have you ever noticed the connection between beauty standards and access to leisure?

In the past when society was more agricultural based and the lower classes worked outdoors, then the standard of beauty was pale skin. Now when the leisure class are the folks that can get tans in winter, well...

[CrispyQ]

40. Funny. I was thinking of that just this morning.

I remember in high school, studying the Renaissance era & one of the boys asked why the women in the paintings were all fat. The teacher explained that what a society deems as desirable is usually what is not easily obtained by the masses. In the Renaissance period, abundance of calories to the point of getting fat was not something easily achieved, hence, voluptuous women were considered the hotties of the day. Today, we work long hours, mostly sedentary, we eat cheap junk food, we don't make time to exercise, so now, being thin is more difficult & hence, considered more attractive.

I remember spending one unhappy, uncomfortable summer lying in the sun to try to get my pale, pale skin tan. Glad I came to my senses early on! My good friend, who has to have a super tan all year round, looks 10 years older than I do.

We are never happy, are we?

[The Inquisitive]

41. I believe that's been empirically documented actually

If memory serves me right, I'm sure I could find the study, or studies on it.

there are few interesting studies showing all sorts of weird relationships between economic factors and cultural standards of beauty.

If memory serves me right there is a strong correlation between societal calorie surplus and average weight of models used in magazine adds. Though that doesn't imply any sort of causation.

Standards of beauty are fickle though there are some relatively universal, I think facial symmetry is one. The subconcious assumptions made about attractive people are astounding. Ever since I researched them heavily for a term paper I've made a point to pay more attention to my appearance, and I'm a guy!

[Blueberry_raspberry]

43. Yep.

"The subconcious assumptions made about attractive people are astounding. Ever since I researched them heavily for a term paper I've made a point to pay more attention to my appearance, and I'm a guy!"

newsprogram did an experiement where they had a tall,white, handsome man in a suit walk into an office (Stock brokerage or financial office). He wasn't looking for a job. He walked into the lobby and sat down. Short, brown, not as attractive men came running out (literally) and offered him a job! On the spot! They didn't know if he could string two words together. They wanted him based on appearance. I knew that appearance mattered but until I saw that episode I didn't know how much.

They also had an 'attractive' and not-so-attractive (not ugly, just average) woman stand by the side of the road with a broken down car. Men couldn't pull over fast enough to help the attractive women. The other woman did not receive assistance.

[jpgray]

34. Fuck that. Dravidian girls are gorgeous.

[Maraya1969]

44. White people try and get darker and dark people try and get lighter.

We are so strange.

[Bucky]

50. It worked wonders for Michael Jackson

Wonders, I tell you.

[tammywammy]

51. I agree

I'm a fair skinned red head with freckles. It took a few years to realize that white skin is pretty too, and we don't all have to be tan.

We had a girl working here that tanned so much, she was orange. It was disgusting.

[entanglement]

47. Trust the megacorps to make a buck any way they can

n/t

[Chovexani]

52. Black folks have this cultural malaise too

Light-skinned = beautiful/desirable and dark-skinned = ugly. Which leads to the stereotype of light-skinned black women being stuck up cows. I'm not very dark-skinned (I'd describe my complexion as chai tea after you've put a bit of milk in it) and when I went back East for a funeral a couple of months ago, half my family had to comment on how black I'd gotten since I've moved to Phoenix. Spike Lee touched on this in School Daze. It goes hand in hand with the "good" hair (long, naturally straight hair) vs. "bad" hair (kinky hair) bullshit. I've had random black women come up to me on the street complimenting me on my hair when I've had it relaxed, asking me what combo of products I use. I don't do anything except wash it and use olive oil. It's just genetics in my case--I have a weird ass mix of ethnicities (black, Creek and Roma). But I always found it vaguely creepy that absolute strangers would divulge their crazy ass hair care techniques to me and ask what they're doing wrong.

OTOH, I wish the wankier natural hair proponents would realize every black woman who relaxes her hair is not some kind of self-hating wannabe. I relax mine because it is insanely thick, grows like vampire hair and is damn near impossible for me to do anything with unless I get it straightened 'cause there's just too much of it--I blame my Roma blood. I also have a very slight, Elvish-looking face due to my weird ass background and 99% of natural styles look awful on me (braids are about the only thing I can carry off well).

[Karenina]

54. I, for one, cannot understand

the bewilderment on this thread. How many of our sisters have "lightened" their hair or downright dyed it BOTTLE BLONDE? How differently did people react to them? Who is willing zo talk about it? WHY is BLONDE hair dye on the top of the list of profit-makers in the cosmetics industry?

As far (wide & deep) as the "light and bright" thang in the Black community goes, given the character of this board on such sensitive topics, I'll stick to the basement codespeak. ;-)

[Chovexani]

56. Oh good grief don't get me started on the blonde thing

In my late teens I dyed my hair bright purple, but needed to bleach it first so it would show up better. Thing is, when you're dealing with punky hair colors, you need to give some time between bleaching and putting the actual color on so I had to walk around with bleached hair for about a week. Why any black woman would willing walk around looking like Carrot Top on the permanent is beyond me. I wore a hat the whole time. :P

(Re: light & bright... that's probably for the best. ;) I still crack up when I think of my late grandma going on and on about the "high yalla heffas" in her hometown.)

[Karenina]

57. Are you too young to remember

the "paper bag" parties and churches? I hope so. THAT shit was some serious funk.

[Blueberry_raspberry]

58. I heard tell of it.

ALso heard that lighter skinned black women were more highly prized by prominant black men of the pre 1970s. I have observed that the wives of these men tend to be light skinned.

Fast forward to 2007 and not much has changed.

[ariesgem]

61. My father use to talk about those parties back in the day

growing up in Harlem in the 1930's. He came out a little scarred from those times. His first requirement for determining a woman's beauty was that she had to be "darker than a paper bag".

Have you noticed that the casting directors in Hollywood continue to use these paper bag standards when selecting black folks (women in particular) for roles in film. The darker skin women are usually cast to the roles of playing hookers, drug addicts, victims, uneducated & abrasive while lighter skin woman are portrayed as objects of beauty and usually the wives of successful black men. When you do on occasion see African Americans with strong black features portraying a married couple, the casting directors select light skin children to portray the kids of the parents. They're cute kids but they never come close to looking like the parents.

[Blueberry_raspberry]

63. Yeah, I have noticed.

"Diversity" in commercials usually involve a mixed raced black woman. Halle Berry skin tone with a massive brown toned fro.

Darker skinned women are portrayed as very abrasive and non sexual.

[eppur_se_muova]

55. Remember a South African billboard advertising skin lightening creams from

maybe 35 yrs ago ... not much changes. Try googling "skin lightening creams" to see the huge range of products out there -- and the problems.

In addition, he says, the preparations contain large amounts of hydroquinone – a white crystalline de-pigmenting agent that is fatal in large concentrations. Victims will suffer from nausea, shortness of breath, convulsions and delirium. Damage to the skin – wrinkles, severe acne, marks – may be irreversible after prolonged use. Sheena-Kay Morris, 16, who also lives in McIntyre Villa, a ‘ghetto’ or garrison community in the volatile capital, Kingston, hasn’t used the creams for almost a year now.

However, her complexion has gone unusually pitch black with bumps on her face and shoulders.

Dr. Persadsingh says some of the products contain steroids and hydroquinone, which are mutagenic. This means they can cause changes in the body that can lead to cancer. Many users, he notes, find their skin gradually becoming darker when they quit using the chemicals, and some develop a scaly layer on their skin. Few return to their original skin color once they have used skin lighteners.

“The prolonged and continued use of these creams will lead to a face looking like a grater,” warns Dr. Persadsingh.

“When we are faced with this type of damage there is nothing that we can do except to advise the patient to live with their condition,” the dermatologist says.

more at: http://www.jamaicans.com/articles/primecomments/0902_bleaching.shtml

[krispos42]

59. I always thought Indian women...

with the dark skin and long straight black hair, to be very attractive. Persians, too.

Why get rid of what works just fine?

I don't know. Maybe because the country lacks light-skinned people?

Companies here make a fortune getting pale, pasty people to go to tanning salons and buy spray-on tan products.

Hmmm, are we as a planet maybe moving to some sort of middle-ground on skin hue?

[WinkyDink]

62. Isn't this intra-India? IOW, I don't think a "Western" influence is what's going on.