Why India's Fair Skin Business Is Booming

[Music] [Applause] [Music] the costume lady just offered the extra boobs I declined give me an upper-body little bit front of the Cambodia [Music] this is the modeling shoot for an Indian company that sells traditional Indian clothes to the Indian market nice to meet you your makeup looks beautiful yeah where you guys from your crayon okay strange thing here there are no engine models there no I'm looking through the catalogue I'm wondering why don't they [Music] don't work in India everything's about skin I see so why aren't there indian models humor is not just we have to retouch off in general it's an open secret in India that fair skin is seen as the beauty ideal but for anyone hoping to become a Bollywood star it can feel more like a job requirement audition messages so big production fair skin or normal skin anything okay but okay so Karthik is showing me all of the casting calls over email and at the you know first line of all of them it's either fair or very fair so you're like Bollywood's casting director yes but I started as an acting teacher my company comes forth in Bollywood so everybody comes well I'll just kind of be standing next to you maybe your sidekick yeah it's my pleasure well let's get started yeah you start so what types of actors are you looking for who mainly it's like bride and groom so I know he will not get selected what the clients has tell us he should be 5 10 above fair looking very dashing how do you think he did not good oh very the look was not going the acting was not going nothing was so if somebody's a great actor but they have a dark complexion will you hire them yes we heard them only if the clients is he we need a dark complexion what the clients has tell us you need the fair complexion trust me oh man propose can I propose me I was thinking about it but is complete is critical to be ready there was noise but perfect but it was perfect girl is very beautiful she's very good-looking and the guy is very good-looking very beautiful he is a perfect choice because again he is a fair-skinned so he comes in upmarket that will cause this of course we wanted to find out what it was actually like on a Bollywood set [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] are you are you the are you love interests in this TV show yeah so what can you got from the title that Hugh she was made a father how did you become a Papa by chance so I met with an accident and I killed their parents well this got dark quick drama you know yeah we were hanging out with the casting director yesterday he was telling us that in a lot of the casting calls they'll ask for fair actors yep and so as a result a lot of actors will start to use like fair and lovely and white miracle in these products is that typical that where the people get named parts are fair-skinned nobody you think they're I think you're very fair I really think I'm gonna obviously an active duty they'll get the makeup done it'll be fair sometimes when actors are denied parts because of their skin tone they'll turn to a booming sector of the Indian beauty industry skin lightening the most popular products have titles like white perfect and fair and lovely and are made by the biggest Western cosmetic companies in the world Unilever Procter & Gamble L'Oreal to name a few around 60% of women in a growing number of men in India say they use these creams and the way they sell off the shelves they hire Bollywood's biggest stars this is India's Don Draper collage Surendranath who created many of these ads and anupama verma the former face a fair and lovely now what is happening actually is the country psychologically is that maybe it's angle of the British Raj but generally a fair complexion has looked up upon but the dark complexion was not so looked upon so especially for marriage what was sort of your standard storyline for these advertisements an arranged marriage is being fixed the boy comes to see the girl baby finds a to dock the next time she is used by and lovely another boy comes to see the girl and Marisa prerequisite to get married the scripts used to be standard and very weird like it was always about you can't get a job unless you're fair you can't get married unless you're fair as a model I was cast because I was fair not because I was really using the products the Indians they feel fair and beautiful everyone so beautiful if you see the matrimonial ads it'll always it once a beautiful educated girl it'll always say wanted fair intelligent girl in fact I know a lot of people love give this for the dowry they give us are these they give you know whatever jewelry yeah and stuff which is gonna take with her and the Fantas cream was there a moment when you both felt like maybe I should stop endorsing this stuff well when I did feel that way I stopped I decided not to sell stupid scripts you know which promise promise the world to you because you're fair that's just I think that's in Indian like um you know little tango or the West is because they feel fair and beautiful fair they think that's beautiful having to fit into a cultural definition of beauty to be a movie star is not an unfamiliar concept Hollywood basically invented it but skin color bias permeates all layers of society here and it's causing some women to go to extreme lengths to become lighter [Music] does that smell her skin burning this is the carbon hitting on these carbon particles with the laser so what it does it will go and hit the mill on it then they'll hit will analyze it it will get destroyed then a patient will feel the sense of glowing and uprightness morning so it basically destroys that destroys equipment temporarily how popular has this treatment bitten from last year thousand one hundred percent increase in the number of people who are coming in for this treatment Wow you've seen a 100 percent growth in this part of your business and may have how did you decide to get this treatment widget of Chile's on another scale here we go indirectly ad the Whopper local parameter documents of pooja today but because of who know not exactly if they're narrow graph to make way better a charge of me you know if you're applying to a job well an employer's say I'm sorry you're you're too dark if you don't miss a bowl ah okay okay look wise a genie who Marco told me there's a dignity receptionist palette and there can be a subspecialty the reception is delivered over to you do you feel a sense of guilt for in some ways perpetuating that narrative yeah yeah you feel that it's not the right thing which you're doing because she's beautiful as I am not helping her getting a job but that is what the industry demands celebrities endorsing these products commercials broadcasted to hundreds of millions of people contributes to an already deeply rooted prejudice that goes back generations Kavita Emmanuel has been working to change this for years with a campaign called dark is beautiful this is a belief that is embedded deep in our minds it is part of our culture where did this all begin I think there are several reasons as to why we have this issue today and people especially here in India people always ask me is it because of colonialism and then there is the caste issue of course we have and the general belief is that the higher up you are in the cart system you are lighter it's the whole idea of the ruler was white is this just sort of in certain parts of society every now and then or is this something that people face every day there are things that we do at home every day that tell you that we are biased when it comes to skin color when a baby is born in India the first thing of course people want to know if it's a girl or a boy but then the next thing people look for is the color of the skin with just when the baby's born just when the baby is born from day one parents start speaking negative stuff about the baby stink also just imagine how the child grows up I saw how it affected the confidence level in girls that really kind of shocked me I thought wow this is a big issue and no one's talking about it campaigns like Emmanuel's have helped to spur others to join in and speak out a youth group called Kranti is helping young girls reclaim their self-esteem I love my skin it's wrong Oprah orangish my mom gave me this and I'm proud of it Conti operates as a home for daughters of sex workers and their mission is to empower their girls to combat class and skin color discrimination it's not about the society it's your own family who has been starting claiming you since a very young age my mama's always be like taunting me for saying like you are so glad that you won't ever get a guy it was so black you won't ever get a job to do this use this will do this homemade remedy you just to look brighter and like why why can't I feel beautiful the way I am how many of you have used a skin lightening cream [Music] when I look back I used to apply creams and I line it all those things to look beautiful my school days that always been like crying about myself I could see myself being a 12 year old girl standing in the front of mirror range TTS volts I could even imagine me like dude you are not beautiful look at you you are a piece of stress like those words hurt [Music] it's out there everyday in your face you'd switch on the television every other product it's talking about whitening your skin and we've seen how it affects children we are a diverse nation with diverse languages and ethnicities I think we should look forward and see why are we still entertaining this toxic belief you

Channel: VICE News

Views: 2,875,234

Rating: 4.8280458 out of 5

Keywords: booming business of fairer skin, India's Fair Skin Business, indias fair skin business, skin bleaching, skin whitening, gianna toboni vice, VICE News Tonight, VICE News, VICE on HBO, news, vice video, vice news 2019, gianna toboni, skin whitening treatment, skin whitening cream, Bollywood, vice on HBO season 6, fair and lovely, narendra modi, skin bleaching cream, race, Skin color, Black lives matter

Id: BlOHSbf9XGI

Length: 13min 32sec (812 seconds)

Published: Mon Jan 20 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/chocobridges]

Ugh I'm going wedding shopping in india in a week. The worst is trying to find to Indian designers who don't use European models to show off their clothes.

[u/Ermaman]

I feel like a lot of people don't understand the difference b/w preferring lighter skin and fetishizing it. I prefer darker skin cause I'm darker skinned. Its an aesthetic preference that I cant fully explain. Here's the jist: if there's a lucrative industry to drastically change an aspect of a person's appearance, its probably fetshized. In the States, its having a fat ass and being fair and slightly ethnic (see: kardashians). In India it's being as close to some abstract concept of "whiteness" as possible. Also if you think someone who's fairer is inherently a better person, you're a piece of shit.

[u/ACE-JHN]

Hence why my relatives in India, think I got lighter because I came to America not because I don’t go outside because I’m usually in class, studying, working, in the gym, eating or sleeping lol. I don’t see the sun ☀️

[u/[deleted]]

All this white supremacy shit needs to end in India. Whites were never superior to anyone, EVER. Stop this bullshit. No one should ever buy these fake-ass products. Nothing but bleaching ur skin with chemicals can whiten ur face. All these "skin whitening" products are nothing but bullshit.

[u/Sorry-Operation]

It's time that we need to take action against this. We can begin now, but:

• NOT supporting the Bollywood propaganda machine of self-doubt and white-supremacy.

• Demand more from Bollywood, and demand no ageism, sexism, raceism, languageism, and colorism. But how do we do this?

I watch Bollywood movies when my roommate watches them, and we passively watch them when we clean up our apartment. It's absolutely ridiculous when I see tons of Ukrainian women and Polish-looking women wearing lehengas. This absolutely fetishizes those girls, and it implies to the impressionable Indian men people that "white girls are crazy about Indian culture and Indian men."

I'm honestly embarrassed with the juvenility of Indian movies and how much it focuses on European destinations and Euro-trash girls. Moreover, these movies are extremely childish, and they speak volumes of the audience who it's marketed for. It shows that Indians are a bit childish in their preference, love predictable stories and predictable derivative jokes, and are white-aspirational.

I'm done with them, and I don't care if any Desi girls are put off by my stance.

[u/manitobot]

I am at a loss for words. It's unspeakable.

[u/Dungeonmaster0396]

This is fucked up on so many levels. There are many indians as 'fair' as those ukrainian models or atleast close to them, especially in kashmir, punjab, himachal regions. many upper caste regular north indians are very 'fair' too. why not use them if they're just looking for light skin? why go all the way to east europe? thats bascially a slap towards indian women.

they use white background dancers, FOR NO REASON, in bollywood and recently in southern indian movies as well. and cheerleaders in IPL cricket are white. Seriously wtf? seriously among 750 million women they couldnt find few cheerleaders, background dancers?

initially i thought maybe theyre using white models/dancers to promote indian entertainment industry across the globe. but thats not happening obviously do whats the point?

[u/tasbir49]

I know this is at most tangentially related to the subject at hand but I've always been confused by usage of the word "fair" to describe skin colour.

For fun, I'm just gonna mentally replace fair with pale.

[u/CapitalHighway]

While we are banning these fair skin procedures can we also ban nose jobs or any other form of enhancements? BTW, fair skin preference is not due to some white-supremacy BS that a lot of people try to portray. This preference was there way before india even knew of white people. In south asia the lightest skinned people were those who didnt work out in the sun and the darkest were the labourers who were out in the sun all day thus people equate light skin to wealth in south asia plus rest of asia.

I think its pretty stupid for bollywood to have mostly white backup dancers but i dont think they are really doing it for the indian audience, its more for the foreign audience like the middle east and rest of asia.