Fair and anxious

On mimicry and skin-lightening in India

Dados Bibliográficos

ID3036151
AutoresShehzad Nadeem (Lehman College, autor correspondente)
Ano2014
Volume20
Fascículo2-3
Páginas224-238
Data de publicação2014-03-04
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessNão
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoSocial Identities (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 1350-4630 • E-ISSN: 1363-0296
EditoraInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/13504630.2014.881282
OpenAlexW2080865667
IdiomaEN
Citações recebidas15
Referências citadas24

Skin-lightening or 'fairness' creams – with their troubling colonial overtones – are big business in India, an over $200 million industry that comprises the largest segment of the country's skin cream market. Although corporations like Unilever have been widely criticized for profiting on colorism, they continue to produce advertisements that equate light skin with beauty, success, and empowerment. Through an analysis of the fairness motif in advertising and popular media, I first show how skin-lightening creams are positioned as alchemic agents of self-transformation. Secondly, as the use of skin lighteners continues to grow in the global South, I ask: how are we to understand this aspiration for lightness? Rather than viewing this kind of cultural mimicry as a form of false consciousness, I argue that it represents an anxious love for the 'other' that is conditioned by power relations

Advertising · Aesthetics · Art · Beauty · Business · Consciousness · Empowerment · Mimicry · Motif (music · Political science · Power (physics · Sociology · Anthropological Studies and Insights · Global Maritime and Colonial Histories · Law · Psychology · South Asian Cinema and Culture