She comes home disgusted and frustrated .Her father,a retired government official,sipping on his hot tea says to his wife “I wish i had a son”.She overhears the conversation as she enters .Without any reaction she walks into the room,throws the bag on her unkempt table.As tears trickle down her cheeks thinking about her rejection,she looks into the mirror cursing her skin color.An ad from the television distracts her,thus giving the solution to her problem.The next thing you see is a fair lady,closely resembling her,wearing a pink outfit entering into an air-hostess academy.Everybody is bewildered by her looks and the girl gets the job making her dad proud. Thanks to the fairness cream.

The above mentioned snippet is a fairness cream advertisement.I am sure many of us remember these funny,lame ads.The stereotypic being the one in which an educated girl proposed for marriage is not liked by the boy because she is not fair. But after few applications of a fairness cream she becomes fair and she is liked by the boy.How meaningless can that get?These fairness cream Ads are completely unfair and its disheartening to learn that the target market includes educated lot largely.The target market also includes the poor and uneducated who get carried away by such products and their outrageously ridiculous advertisements.Who do you think buys the “affordable” Rs 1/- sachet of such so-called whitening cream? A recent interview of one of the board of directors of a popular whitening cream quoted that their products are about “choice and economic empowerment for women”.He says “women who use such fairness creams have a choice and gets empowered”.Why would an empowered woman need to get fair in the first instance?And what choices are they talking about?

Fairness Cream for women were not enough that it has been introduced for men,also.The ads are even more lame.A tall,dark and handsome guy approaches a girl to ask her out.The girl clearly rejects him because he is not fair.But after the application of a skin whitening cream which has something called as “multiplier effect” he can make a choice among the various other girls.For God sake,whom are they fooling?(I know majority are being bought this way).And what on earth is the “multiplier effect”? Surveys have proved that whitening cream as such is not even a pharmaceutical product.They are just a Business strategy affecting the lower layers of the pyramid.

It is even more hurting to see celebrities becoming brand ambassadors for such products.Hope they wake up and use their stardom the right way.These ads are encouraging apartheid and some serious actions have to taken against them,to curb them.This is not the first time that a finger has been pointed to the fairness cream firms.But since it is a free market with people having the right to buy what they want,not much can be done. How many of us are willing to use consumer-rights court to fight it out? It is however,socially desirable to put some constraints on free marketing of Fairness creams since private profits are over-shadowing public interests.

The following are some videos that i want to share.Please dont miss the last one.The first one is an Arabic version(I am not sure about this…but its persian).It purely shows how the lovely lady,who i think is already fair is discriminated because of her color.

The second one is taken from some Nummat.She is giving her ideas and opinions on the famous Genelia fair and lovely Ad.

The last one.This is my Faveriote.Its called Dark and lovely.Dont miss this.Its really cute