Saturday, June 2, 2007
Not Fair
Ethical advertising. Sounds contradicting ?
I was watching a Fair & Lovely ad a couple of days back. It was about a girl whom grooms kept rejecting because she is dark. It was plainly revolting to see HLL take advantage of the feelings of dark complexioned girls. As it is, explicitly and implicitly, we are bombarded with the idea that dark skin is bad.
Our film industry glorifies fairness of skin. Most successful models, newsreaders, anchors, male and female, in India are fair. Thus the idea that dark complexioned people cannot be beautiful/handsome has taken firm root in our minds. Matrimonial advertisements in the classified section looking for brides bear testimony to this fact. They invariably call for 'fair', 'white' girls.
Of course, crudely put, the basic objective of any commercial is to brainwash the average Joe and/or create a need where none exists. In that sense, I guess we need to cut HLL some slack. But one needs to draw the line somewhere. Commercials that aim to manipulate children or ones that play upon inferiority complexes of people are to be censured. Of course, one can always argue that they are not breaking any law. But then again, we are not talking law here; we are talking ethics.
We need to wake up to the fact that there is more to a person than just skin which is fair and lovely.
I was watching a Fair & Lovely ad a couple of days back. It was about a girl whom grooms kept rejecting because she is dark. It was plainly revolting to see HLL take advantage of the feelings of dark complexioned girls. As it is, explicitly and implicitly, we are bombarded with the idea that dark skin is bad.
Our film industry glorifies fairness of skin. Most successful models, newsreaders, anchors, male and female, in India are fair. Thus the idea that dark complexioned people cannot be beautiful/handsome has taken firm root in our minds. Matrimonial advertisements in the classified section looking for brides bear testimony to this fact. They invariably call for 'fair', 'white' girls.
Of course, crudely put, the basic objective of any commercial is to brainwash the average Joe and/or create a need where none exists. In that sense, I guess we need to cut HLL some slack. But one needs to draw the line somewhere. Commercials that aim to manipulate children or ones that play upon inferiority complexes of people are to be censured. Of course, one can always argue that they are not breaking any law. But then again, we are not talking law here; we are talking ethics.
We need to wake up to the fact that there is more to a person than just skin which is fair and lovely.
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