Is being fair being lovely?

There was an incident which deeply affected me. I was going to a college with my friend to take part in a cultural event. On the way, I saw my buddy taking out a fairness cream from his bag and then applying it, all over his face. Though the act was funny, I later found it to be thought-provoking.

 What made him apply the fairness cream? Does he think he is inferior to others just because he is a little dark-complexioned? Is the fairness cream a confidence-booster? We see a large number of advertisements through television, internet and other media, most of which are misleading. The worst category of misleading advertisements comprises of the cosmetic ads- that of fairness creams, powders, beauty talc, beauty soap etc. The common element of all these advertisements, unfortunately, is that all of them possess a bad ideology – an ideology which can be called very dangerous, deadly and venomous. The unhealthy notion they preach is this: they portray a person who is given the tag of a ‘failure’ just because he/she is dark-complexioned. It is further seen in the commercial that the same person undergoes what can be called as a ‘fairness treatment’ and turns into a fair man, and more than that a successful man. It is depicted that success comes with being fair. Success comes along with your color. If cross-examined, the message says unless and until a person is fair-complexioned, or at least pretends to be fair-complexioned, he/she is good for nothing and hence, cannot survive in our current society. It is your ‘color’ which matters, than all other qualities you possess. These advertisements have caused serious mental irritation in me over the last few days. They equate ‘black’ to failure and ‘white’ to success. You turn white, and you get a job or a career-break, a new love affair or anything and everything which you were deprived of earlier.

Another point to be noted is the about the time. All this happens in today’s world. We are in the second decade of the twenty-first century where people tend to believe that discrimination on the lines of color, caste, creed and class have taken a back seat in the society. They feel the mental and social evils have reduced with the advancement of time and the modernization of human thoughts. But these advertisements and the message they convey bring light to the reality – the bitter truth. The discrimination and the mental illness of superiority still exist like a cancer within us. What is worse is, those people who are free of this illness also get used to watching these advertisements which in turn makes them prone to be reflecting these in their actions.

Advertisements have this quality of stimulating wants in people’s minds even if a meager percentage of the want wasn't present before. They can stimulate artificial wants which in reality is an unnecessary want. This particular quality which advertisements possess adds fuel to the already burning fire. The most unfortunate aspect is the failure of the common public in realizing the threats these advertisements brandish. The ‘wrong conviction’ these advertisements pass on, is like a cancerous bug multiplying and spreading across, invisibly. This bug has its final destination, and that destination is the degradation of mankind. Color and class have always been the root cause for all the social-evils and consequent bloodsheds. Indian movies have this decade-long tradition of ‘white’ women paired with men both dark and fair alike. But rarely can someone notice a fair hero paired with a dark heroine.

 Virtual untouchability still prevails in our nation. The nightmarish social evils have not vanished. They have just taken different forms and are still omnipresent. They are intangible. We, with the left-over qualities that make us human beings, have to start curbing them – curbing them from within our minds first, and then from the society finally.