After a couple of days spent in the sun playing basketball or out on the beach sans sunscreen, I’d come back home coconut-coloured and be met with responses of ‘Wow, you’ve become so TAN’ from several well-meaning Indian aunties over the next few days.

I remember them surveying my face and arms with great disapproval, as though making mental notes. I have to admit, it made me squirm sometimes, even as an innocent 9-year-old. These, and much larger manifestations of these, insecurities and stigmatised mind-sets are the basis upon which India’s ubiquitous fairness product industry, a $432 million market, is based. 

in relation to being attractive to the opposite sex, matrimony, job placement, promotions and other prospects.’

“There is a strong concern in certain sections of society that advertising of fairness products tends to communicate and perpetuate the notion that dark skin is inferior and undesirable.” 

called out in this earlier article f

“Because of the proliferation of products — more than a dozen brands and even for men — there was a need to say something specific about ads not being disparaging to people with darker skin,”

Dark Is Beautiful