The concept of “flawless” beauty has led to favoritism of certain qualities especially when it comes to how women’s beauty is perceived throughout the generations.
When in the 50s, Marilyn Monroe became the epitome of “beauty”, the world embraced it with all their unfulfilled desires; seamlessly forgetting all those women who didn’t fit into the mold.
And to date, we struggle to establish a simple concept of beauty. Well, it’s not bad all over. People are now accepting “diversified beauty”. But the fact that a person has to be categorized into a special segment just to be accepted it differentiation, isn’t it?
The Current Scenario
An April issue of The Journal of Consumer Research studied a simple response to women in heels. It stated that an image of the high-heeled shoe in a stylish advertisement is likely to trigger a sense of inadequacy.
Now, if a 4-inch shoe can create such a trigger, imagine what effect does fairness cream or rather it’s new so-called “less demeaning” term brightening cream does to women? Especially in a country like India!
It is estimated that in our country alone the estimated market revenues of fairness products would be Rs. 5,000 crore by the year 2023.
To be fair, there has always been a craze among Indian society for fair-toned skin. The matrimony sites are a great example of this. A premium site like Shaddi.com cites fair skin as a key factor.
In the middle-class family, it starts with older women putting Haldi, lemon juice, honey and what not to put the skin to get “brighter” “fresher” and “whiter” skin.
Now as soon as the girl grows into her teen years, whatever is left of her confidence is then taken care of by fairness cream ads, fair skin stars promoting fairness brands, social media, beauty pageants, T.V serials & so on.
Although, there have been protests against brands like Fair & Lovely, Fair & Handsome, Garnier, Neutrogena, etc. Still, Indian women somewhere are attached to the use of fairness cream in their day to day life.
Beauty blogger Karishma Rawat, actress Yami Gautam associating themselves with brands that primarily sells “fairness” products, even if it does something for a good cause is actually promoting fair skin.
And the issue is way beyond just promoting fairness cream.
Unrealistic Beauty Standards
The craze for “perfection” has led to unrealistic beauty standards among women. Cosmetic companies have often claimed that they retouch images of models to make them more flawless.
For example, the Maxim cover of 2016, when they retouched Priyanka Chopra’s underarms to make it brighter created much controversy. Or the beauty gurus promoting fairness cosmetics on a regular basis!
The increased fixation on an ideal beauty standard to encourage women to buy more & more beauty products has led to unrealistic expectations.
Appearance Dissatisfaction
A 2002 study published in the “Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology” found that women expressed more dissatisfaction with their appearances after watching advertisements. Now, the study is more than 10 years old.
Researchers have stated that the numbers have increased rapidly over the last few years. Only 5% of US women fit the body type popularly portrayed in today’s advertising.
And over 69% of the girls confessed to having tried to fit into the models found in magazines as they find that perfect. This dissatisfaction works to advertiser’s advantage when they are selling a product, especially cosmetic companies.
Toxic Effects on Modern Advertisement
Cyberbullying is a huge problem, which can lead to depression and suicide. While advertising cannot assume full responsibility, the role it plays in creating images of physical perfection cannot be ignored.
The Role of Social Media
Social media is a two-sided sword frankly. Though influencers are urged to use hashtags such as #spon or #ad in paid-for posts, the legalities remain somewhat ambiguous.
Also, the fact that your favorite social media influencer is using or promoting a certain “brightening” cream will make you think that she is promoting fair skin over ones.
Some Instagrammers can earn up to $60,000 per post, for such type of promotions.
Not only cosmetics or fairness creams even brands like Protein World can have a hell of negative body influence. But we will discuss it later I promise!
A significant part of this harmful beauty ideology is caused by a negative cumulative effect.
Government initiative towards the eradication of fairness creams
The ministry of health and family welfare has finalized Drugs and Magic Remedies (Objectionable Advertisements) (Amendment) Bill, 2020, is said to ban advertisements of products that promote fairness creams, enhance sexual performance, cure premature aging and greying of hair, improvement in height of children or adults, increase in brain capacity and memory, improvement in strength of teeth and vision, change of fetal gender by drugs.
Apart from various NGOs or model, Olivia Sang talking about colorism in fashion or any industry for that matter, this is the first time the government has taken a serious initiative in our country.
Under this act, the bill also proposed five years of jail & upto Rs.50 lakhs of fine.
Although 50 lakhs is a mere amount of such a giant industry, an initiative like this is a great start.
Initiatives that are taken by Influencers to fight the cause
A Dove campaign along with actress Radhika Apte through Grazia magazine promoted “untouched” no-filter photos to encourage women to accept their beauty.
Also, beauty gurus like Kaushal Beauty in 2017, did a video on how here skin looks different under different camera settings. Bollywood stars like Kalki Koechlin, Kangana Ranaut have refused crores of deals to promote fairness products.
Smaller influencers like Shreya Jain is known for criticizing major brands for their lack of product ranges for darker complexions or call-out “brightening” creams on many occasions.
Initiatives like this are worth to accolade and be promoted more.
The fixation of fair-skinned beauty is something that won’t go away so easily in a country like India. Years of feudalism & seeds of insecurity have nested too deep into our roots that it is not a day’s job to get rid of those complexities.
Nevertheless, with more & more people talking about the issue & some sincere help from the government might bring out better results in our future.
How are you planning to fight social issues through digital media? Got any ideas? Tell us at Skyram Technologies. We will help you to bring your digital idea to life!
Also, for more of our blogs read here!
