{"id":25525,"date":"2016-10-14T09:47:31","date_gmt":"2016-10-14T14:47:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/?p=25525"},"modified":"2016-09-16T15:25:11","modified_gmt":"2016-09-16T20:25:11","slug":"multinational-corporations-and-the-cultivation-of-colorism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/2016\/10\/14\/multinational-corporations-and-the-cultivation-of-colorism\/","title":{"rendered":"Western Corporations and the Cultivation of Colorism in India"},"content":{"rendered":"

Flashback Friday.<\/em><\/p>\n

Previously marketed to women, skin lightening, bleaching, and \u201cfairness\u201d creams are being newly marketed to men<\/a>.\u00a0 The introduction of a Facebook application<\/a> has triggered a wave of commentary among American journalists and bloggers.\u00a0 The application, launched by Vaseline and aimed at men in India, smoothes out blotches and lightens the overall skin color of your profile photo, allowing men to present a more \u201cradiant\u201d face to their friends.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The U.S. commentary involves a great deal of hand-wringing over Indian preference for light skin and the lengths to which even men<\/em> will go to get a few shades lighter.\u00a0 Indians, it is claimed, have a preference for light skin because skin color and caste are connected in the Indian imagination.\u00a0 Dating and career success, they say further, are linked to skin color.\u00a0 Perhaps, these sources admit, colorism in India is related to British colonialism and the importation of a color-based hierarchy; but that was then and, today, India embraces prejudice against dark-skinned people, thereby creating a market for these unsavory products.<\/p>\n

The obsession with light skin, however, cannot be solely blamed on insecure individuals or a now internalized colorism imported from elsewhere a long time ago.\u00a0 Instead, a preference for white skin is being cultivated, today, by corporations seeking profit.\u00a0 Sociologist Evelyn Nakano Glenn documents the global business of skin lightening in her article, Yearning for Lightness<\/a><\/em>.\u00a0 She argues that interest in the products is rising<\/em>, especially in places where \u201c\u2026the influence of Western capitalism and culture are most prominent.\u201d\u00a0 The success of these products, then, \u201ccannot be seen as simply a legacy of colonialism.\u201d\u00a0 Instead, it is being actively produced by giant multinational companies today.<\/p>\n

The Facebook application is one example of this phenomenon.\u00a0 It does not simply reflect an interest in lighter skin; it very deliberately tells users that they need to \u201cbe prepared\u201d to make a first impression and makes it very clear that skin blotches and overall darkness is undesirable and smooth, light-colored skin is ideal.\u00a0 Marketing for skin lightening products not only suggests that light skin is more attractive, it also links light skin to career success, overall upward mobility, and Westernization.\u00a0 Some advertising<\/a>, for example, overtly links dark skin with saris and unemployment for women, while linking light skin with Western clothes and a career.<\/p>\n

The desire for light skin, then, isn’t an “Indian problem” for which they should be entirely blamed. It is being encouraged by corporations who stand to profit from color-based anxieties that are overtly tied to the supposed superiority of Western culture.\u00a0 These corporations, it stands to be noted, are not Indian.\u00a0 They are largely Western: L\u2019Oreal and Unilever are two of the biggest companies.\u00a0 The supposedly Indian<\/em> preference for light skin, then, is being stoked and manufactured by companies based in countries populated primarily by light-skinned people.\u00a0 As Glenn explains, \u201cSuch advertisements can be seen as not simply responding to a preexisting need but actually creating a need by depicting having dark skin as a painful and depressing experience.\u201d<\/p>\n

Before pitying Indian seekers of light-skin, condemning the nation for colorism, or gently shaking our heads over the legacies of colonialism, we should consider how ongoing<\/em> Western cultural dominance (that is, racism and colorism in the West today) and capitalist economic penetration (that is, profit through the cultivation of insecurities around the world) contributes to the global market in skin lightening products.<\/p>\n

Originally posted in 2010;\u00a0crossposted at BlogHer<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\nLisa Wade, PhD<\/a> is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of <\/em>American Hookup<\/a>, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender<\/a>; and a forthcoming introductory text: <\/em>Terrible Magnificent Sociology<\/a>.\u00a0You can follow her on Twitter<\/a> and Instagram<\/a>.<\/em><\/span>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Flashback Friday. Previously marketed to women, skin lightening, bleaching, and \u201cfairness\u201d creams are being newly marketed to men.\u00a0 The introduction of a Facebook application has triggered a wave of commentary among American journalists and bloggers.\u00a0 The application, launched by Vaseline and aimed at men in India, smoothes out blotches and lightens the overall skin color […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":51,"featured_media":69375,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[232,373,98,55,64,1784,283,285,1759,140],"class_list":["post-25525","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-cultural-imperialismneocolonialism","tag-color","tag-capitalism","tag-gender","tag-globalization","tag-nation-india","tag-prejudicediscrimination","tag-raceethnicity","tag-raceethnicity-asianspacific-islanders","tag-internet"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2010\/07\/5-1.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25525","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/51"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25525"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25525\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":69376,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25525\/revisions\/69376"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/69375"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25525"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25525"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25525"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}