The ‘fair’ in fairness creams

The commercial starts with a tan girl sitting sad and feeling miserable about her complexion. Everyone at office or in her family avoids her; the girls make of of her while the men ignore her. The girl is depressed and feels hopeless because she can’t achieve anything and no one likes her. Why? Because she has a dark complexion. Then her friend who is fair and pretty and everyone is friends with her comes to her and consoles her on not be sad but use this ‘fairness’ cream which will work wonders on her skin. She uses it and poof the magic cream does wonders to her skin. She turns into a beautiful girl with fair and spot less skin and suddenly achieves everything she wants in life; gets a dream job and all the boys suddenly seem interested in her too! These advertisements have convinced us that, if you have a dark complexion, you won’t be accepted in this society. But is everything fair in the advertising game?

We are obsessed with fairness and that is evident from the way these creams do brisk business in the country. We must know how a person gets

skin colour. There is a pigment in the body called Melanin. Now more the melanin in the skin the darker the skin is. Melanin has its own useful effects like it blocks cancer causing rays of the sun so you would find that coloured people get less skin cancer than white people and also coloured people get less sun burns. Now fairness creams block the Secretion of the melanin in the skin thus making it less coloured.  A warning issued by the World Health Organization (WHO) says that the common ingredient in skin lightening products — mercury — can have adverse effects such as kidney damage, reduction in the skin’s resistance to bacterial and fungal infections, anxiety, depression or psychosis and also peripheral neuropathy. Aroma Magic Fair Lotion, a product of Blossom Kochhar Beauty Products Pvt Ltd, had the highest mercury level at 1.97 ppm, followed by Olay Natural White (1.79 ppm), a product of Procter and Gamble, India, and Ponds White Beauty (1.36 ppm) of Hindustan Unilever Ltd.

Where there is skin damage, there is also psychological damage caused by such products. The dark side of the fairness products is that they do not serve the purpose they are made for; no fairness cream or bar of soap can change your skin colour. Your skin colour is natural just like your eye and hair colour. When people use these products in an attempt to change their complexion, temporarily they may work, but in the long term they wear off leading to frustration, depression and the obsession of switching from one product to another.

Many dermatologists feel that suppressing the production of melanin can have adverse long-term effects. Cosmetic products only polish the skin superficially. What is important is to keep skin healthy and clean. Any tone is beautiful, whatever the shade. Why else would Westeners vie for Asian skin tone and go for bronzers and sun-tanned look?