Friday, August 31, 2007

Fair and ...

At a work a couple nights ago I came across MTV India. Purely out of intrigue, I watched for a few minutes. Nothing too different; reports on new hip music and a young male named Silky Kumar acting diirrrttyy by slapping his behind. Pretty standard MTV crap, although the english was replaced by Hindi and the clothing was far more conservative. Close to deciding that I had had enough, a glimmer of light skinned Hindu girls chasing after "Mr. Handsome!" struck me that I was in MTV India's grips. Why on earth were these attractive women scrambling to date this awful Michael Jackson look-alike? Well, I was truly hoping that my eyes were being deviantly misinformed while a darker version of the above mentioned was being chastised for not using a certain cream. The girls caught up to him and the product name rolled off their misguided lips:

"Fair and Handsome. Five power fairness system to make skin fair and handsome in 4 weeks."

Whaaa??! I knew India's population was rankled with fair and dark prejudices due to the Caste system and probably other reasons, but really? You want to bleach your skin? It's sad, and really disgusting that there is a product meant for this. Can't we stop the ridiculous idea that fair is superior?

http://www.fairandhandsome.net/

A great web page that discusses the ethics of Fair and Handsome : http://www.sepiamutiny.com/sepia/archives/004677.html

Here is the commercial: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-3C9hkCuZv0