{"id":35251,"date":"2020-07-27T19:43:00","date_gmt":"2020-07-27T16:43:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/en.buradabiliyorum.com\/whitening-creams-undergo-a-makeover-but-colorism-persists\/"},"modified":"2020-07-27T19:43:00","modified_gmt":"2020-07-27T16:43:00","slug":"whitening-creams-undergo-a-makeover-but-colorism-persists","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/whitening-creams-undergo-a-makeover-but-colorism-persists\/","title":{"rendered":"#\u2018Whitening\u2019 creams undergo a makeover but colorism persists"},"content":{"rendered":"

“#\u2018Whitening\u2019 creams undergo a makeover but colorism persists<\/strong>”<\/p>\n

\n DUBAI, United Arab Emirates \u2014 The world\u2019s biggest cosmetics companies have been selling a fairy tale that often goes something like this: If your husband\u2019s lost interest in you, if your colleagues dismiss you at work, if your talents are ignored, whiten your skin to turn your love life around, boost your career and command center stage.<\/p>\n

No company has had greater success peddling this message across Asia, Africa and the Middle East than Unilever\u2019s Fair & Lovely brand, which sells millions of tubes of skin lightening cream annually for as little as $2 a piece in India.<\/p>\n

The 45-year-old brand earns the Anglo-Dutch conglomerate Unilever more than $500 million in yearly revenue in India alone, according to Jefferies financial analysts.<\/p>\n

Following decades of pervasive advertising promoting the power of lighter skin, a rebranding is hitting shelves. But it\u2019s unlikely that fresh marketing by the world\u2019s biggest brands in beauty will reverse deeply rooted prejudices around \u201ccolorism,\u201d the idea that fair skin is better than dark skin.<\/p>\n

Unilever said it is removing words like \u201cfair,\u201d \u201cwhite\u201d and \u201clight\u201d from its marketing and packaging, explaining the decision as a move toward \u201ca more inclusive vision of beauty.\u201d Unilever\u2019s Indian subsidiary, Hindustan Unilever Limited, said the Fair & Lovely brand will instead be known as \u201cGlow & Lovely.\u201d<\/p>\n

French cosmetics giant L\u2019Oreal followed suit, saying it too would remove similar wording from its products. Johnson & Johnson said it will stop selling Neutrogena\u2019s fairness and skin-whitening lines altogether.<\/p>\n

The makeover is happ<\/a>ening in the wake of mass protests against racial injustice following the death of George Floyd, a black man pinned to the ground by a white police officer in the U.S.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s the latest in a series<\/a> of changes as companies rethink their policies amid Black Lives Matter protests, which have spread around the world and reignited conversations about race.<\/p>\n

Activists around the world have long sought to counter Unilever\u2019s aggressive marketing of Fair & Lovely, with the brand\u2019s advertisements criticized by women\u2019s groups from Egypt to Malaysia.<\/p>\n

Kavitha Emmanuel founded the \u201cDark is Beautiful\u201d campaign in India more than a decade ago to counter perceptions that lighter skin is more beautiful than naturally darker skin. She said multinational companies like Unilever did not initiate skin tone bias, but have capitalized on it.<\/p>\n

\u201cEndorsing such a belief for 45 years is definitely quite damaging,\u201d Emmanuel said, adding that it has eroded the self-worth of many young women across India.<\/p>\n

For women raised on these fixed standards of beauty, the market is awash in products and services that can both brighten pigmentation from skin damage and outright lighten skin.<\/p>\n

At the Skin and Body International beauty clinic in South Africa, owner Tabby Kara said she sees a lot of people inquiring about going one or two shades lighter.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a general<\/a> demand in Africa,\u201d she said. \u201cPeople do want to be a bit fairer simply because society expects or is more interested in the fairness of a person.\u201d<\/p>\n

Historically, throughout North Africa and Asia, darker skin has been associated with poor laborers who work in the sun \u2014 unlike in Western cultures, where tanned skin is often a sign of time for leisure and beauty.<\/p>\n

India\u2019s cultural fixation with lighter skin is embedded in daily matrimonial ads, which frequently note the skin tone of brides and grooms as \u201cfair\u201d or \u201cwheatish\u201d alongside their height, age and education.<\/p>\n

The ancient Hindu caste system has helped uphold some of the bias, with darker-skinned people often seen as \u201cuntouchables\u201d and relegated to the dirtiest jobs, such as cleaning sewage.<\/p>\n

The power of whiter, fairer skin in many countries was further reinforced by European rule, and later by Hollywood and Bollywood film stars who\u2019ve featured in skin lightening ads.<\/p>\n

In Japan, pale translucent skin has been coveted since at least the 11th Century. So-called \u201cbihaku\u201d products, based on the Japanese characters for \u201cbeauty\u201d and \u201cwhite,\u201d remain popular today among major brands.<\/p>\n

The high-end Tokyo-based skin care brand Shiseido says none of its \u201cbihaku\u201d products contain ingredients that bleach skin, but do reduce melanin that can lead to blemishes. The company says it has no plans to change its product names, including the \u201cWhite Lucent\u201d line, simply because other global companies have done so.<\/p>\n

In South Korea, the words \u201cwhitening\u201d or \u201cmibaek\u201d have been used in about 1,200 kinds of cosmetics products since 2001, according to the Ministry of Food and Drug Safety.<\/p>\n

About $283 million worth of \u201cmibaek\u201d products were manufactured last year in South Korea, the ministry has said.<\/p>\n

South Korean beauty company Amore Pacific said it uses the word \u201cbrightening\u201d for exports to the U.S. to respect cultural diversity. Domestically, however, they cannot replace words like \u201cmibaek\u201d on creams sold in South Korea because of laws requiring the use of specific terms to describe the function of skin lightening products.<\/p>\n

The U.S.-based Proctor & Gamble, which sells Olay brands \u201cNatural White\u201d and \u201cWhite Radiance\u201d, declined to comment when asked whether it had plans to rebrand globally.<\/p>\n

Emmanuel said she welcomes the decisions by Unilever and L\u2019Oreal, but wants to know whether they will evolve their entire narrative around skin lightening.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re really excited it\u2019s happening, but we\u2019re yet to see what is really going to change,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Unilever said in its announcement that it recognizes \u201cthe use of the words \u2018fair\u2019, \u2018white\u2019 and \u2018light\u2019 suggest a singular ideal of beauty that we don\u2019t think is right.\u201d Instead, the statement referred to products that deliver \u201cglow, even tone, skin clarity and radiance.\u201d<\/p>\n

Alex Malouf, a Dubai-based marketing executive who was formerly at Proctor & Gamble, said companies had been playing to different audiences around the world but are now paying attention to the societal changes happening in the U.S. and Europe, where shareholders are primarily based.<\/p>\n

L\u2019Oreal, for example, tweeted last month it \u201cstands in solidarity with the Black community and against injustice of any kind.\u201d Its products in the U.S. include the Dark & Lovely brand, aimed at black women.<\/p>\n

Outside the U.S., however, the company was marketing its \u201cWhite Perfect\u201d line for a \u201cfair, flawless complexion.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cBut you can\u2019t do that in the digital age because I can see what you guys are doing in the U.S.,\u201d Malouf said. \u201cI can see what you do over here,\u201d\n <\/p><\/div>\n

\n

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“#\u2018Whitening\u2019 creams undergo a makeover but colorism persists” DUBAI, United Arab Emirates \u2014 The world\u2019s biggest cosmetics companies have been selling a fairy tale that often goes something like this: If your husband\u2019s lost interest in you, if your colleagues dismiss you at work, if your talents are ignored, whiten your skin to turn your…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35252,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[44781],"class_list":["post-35251","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general","tag-whitening-creams-undergo-a-makeover-but-colorism-persists"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35251","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35251"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35251\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35252"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35251"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35251"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35251"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}