Shades of Brown

The BBC is reporting that Shah Rukh Khan, the Indian megastar, is promoting a skin-lightening cream called 'Fair and Handsome.' Predictably, activists are up in arms-- and just as predictably, distributors defend the product wholeheartedly, citing the demand (skin lightening products are apparently a $200 million dollar industry in India) and its efficacy, saying rather stupidly, "It does what it says. It makes you fair and handsome."

Whatever. It's clearly a stupid, superficial product that reinforces racial (and in India, caste) stereotypes. But to me, it's also not appreciably worse than any number of stupid, superficial products Westerners consume in huge quantities-- Botox, breast enhancements, and (irony, anyone?) cancer-causing tanning salons come to mind.

So: Shah Rukh is certainly not to be lauded for appearing in this commercial--I find it unfortunate and uncomfortable-- But I also think that Fair and Handsome has every right to sell its products, as long as they're not harmful. If activists want to stop the sale of skin-lightening creams, they should target the source-- lingering cultural prejudices and the (light-skinned) beauty norms promoted by the (almost exclusively light-skinned) Bollywood machine. So yes, criticize Shah Rukh for doing the ad. But if you ban the products without eliminating the cultural preference for lighter skin, people are going to resort to other, much more dangerous, methods of attaining 'fairness'.