The Aspiration For Lighter Skin
"You can't say that Black lives matter in one part of the world and actively promote a skin whitening product in another part of the world."
BEAUTY IRL is a newsletter that covers beauty at the intersection of politics and pop culture through breaking news, trends, and personal experiences.
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I wrote a reported feature for Allure on how the Black Lives Matter movement, and subsequent conversations around racism and colorism, caused beauty brands selling "whitening" products to question what they were doing — and make some changes. In the past few months, some announced they would either discontinue skin-whitening lines or end the use of words such as “whiten/whitening,” “fair” and “light.” My biggest takeaways from working on the story are that well-known beauty brands use "whitening" language to market products that simply even skin tone. Secondly, colorism and the pursuit (and pressure) to be lighter, has been used to sell products. The question becomes: How can we change people's aspiration for lighter skin? The story appears in Allure’s “Best of Beauty” October 2020 issue.
One of the people I interviewed during the reporting process was Nina Davuluri. Nina is the first Indian American to win Miss America in 2014 and host and producer of the docuseries COMPLEXion. Our entire conversation has truly stuck with me, so I feel urged to share it with all of you.
(This conversation has been condensed and edited for clarity.)
Sheila Dhulab has a facial done with skin-lightening products for the first time in Johannesburg, South Africa. Gulshan Khan/Getty Images
Darian: I have a deeper understanding of skin whitening from a global perspective after watching your docuseries #COMPLEXion and talking with more people who advocate against the skin-lightening industry.
I wanted to talk about your personal experience with colorism, the documentary that you've been filming, and how Bollywood is connected to the skin-lightening industry.
I think my first question for you is growing up, I read that you spent most of your childhood in Michigan. It seems like that’s where you got involved with pageant competitions. You also went home to India over the summer pretty often. And I'm curious about the experience of living in America but also going back home... What did you learn, or what were you taught, about yourself in terms of your complexion?
Nina: It was a struggle. Growing up in a South Asian family I heard several comments like “Don't go out in the sun, you're gonna get too dark” or “Oh, you'd be so much more beautiful if you were a few shades lighter.” And this is very normalized in our culture. I would come off of a 16-hour flight from India and the first thing is “Oh, you look a little dark.”
And then on the other side, I would come back here and I would have my classmates and friends say to me “Oh my goodness you're so tan. I love your skin tone, I wish I had it.” So growing up with one foot in each culture was very difficult to navigate because I was being told many different things, and I don't think it was really until I was in high school that I embraced my ethnicity, my culture, and who I was.
Darian: When you won Miss America what was the conversation or the narrative about your win in the South Asian community, which I know is a broad term. But, what was their reaction to your win as a dark-skinned woman?
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Nina: Well, first to set the scene for why this was such a tipping point for me. I remember at 8-years-old, I was in India for the summer and I had a patch of eczema on my head. I went to the dermatologist and he gave me a cream and he said to apply it twice a day and I should be fine. And I remember at that moment looking at him and asking, “Do you have a cream that you can give me that will make me lighter?” I was 8-years-old and that's what I sincerely believed I needed to be considered beautiful.
And there were several other experiences along the way. For Miss America, there was a point where I embraced my culture and my ethnicity. I did a Bollywood dance. I was unapologetically Indian, but of course, I consider myself American too. But I was trying to embrace who I was from both sides. And I loved that.
Then the morning after, I woke up to a headline in an Indian newspaper and it said 'Is Miss America too dark to be Miss India?' For me, it was that little 8-year-old girl. I thought back to 8-year-old Nina. And I thought to myself, “I don't want any other 8-year-old girls to ever feel this way. To ever feel the way that I did at that moment asking for a skin whitening cream.”
Why as a society and culture do we ingrain that light skin is ideal, more worthy than darker skin? It’s unacceptable. It's certainly colorism and inherently racism as well.
Darian: I think the thing I find interesting about your experience is how you describe going to see your family in India and hearing 'Oh you're looking pretty dark.' And then going back to school, and I presume white people saying 'You're so tan! You look so good!' It’s this idea of lighter skin being elite… but then hearing from your white peers that you look so great. It all becomes a comparison game. When did you start filming #COMPLEXion?
Nina: We started production two years ago, and the last place we filmed was India and Bangladesh in January 2020. We were supposed to finish our Africa chapter in Kenya, Ghana, and Nigeria. Unfortunately, with COVID-19 we haven't been able to, but we have the first pilot episode finished and that is the India and Bangladesh chapter. Every episode after that will be a different country, and how colorism affects those countries. What we realized while filming is that this exists in many parts of the world but how it plays out in communities is very different, and we wanted to stay true to those stories.
Darian:
The conversations that you have with teens or younger people in the docuseries... it seems like they are talking about skin whitening and what that means within their communities?
Nina:
I think in the Indian American community we are recognizing that colorism is not okay and addressing it. But within India, it's still kind of new. And so when we were filming, and I asked about colorism or how it affected them, all of them started with “Oh no that's not something we believe” or “We're not racist that doesn't exist in my home.” I’m spending days at a time with them, of course we dive deeper. It's that one person who shares a personal story of, “My grandmother said that if I were lighter, this color would look better on me.”
I think the conversation is still very uncomfortable, whether at a wealthy school or orphanage. It's the first time that they've had to think about why this exists and why it's not okay for people to make these comments. I hope this plants a seed and people start to ask why this is in their community. I think what sparked this entire discussion was Black Lives Matter and the question, “How do we be actively anti-racist within our communities, in our own homes?”
Darian: You talk about Bollywood and its participation in the skin whitening industry through ads and endorsements. How would you explain how Bollywood and the skin-lightening industry are connected?
Nina: I mean, one hand washes the other. They're very interconnected and I would also add that media conglomerates are also a part of this. All of them collectively have built this hierarchical image that light skin is more worthy than darker skin. Fair & Lovely is notoriously known for ads where a dark girl isn’t not getting a job or isn’t married and then all of a sudden, she uses the product and there she is with a career and husband and everything you could want.* So they're selling this pervasive toxic ideology that this is their golden ticket to their way out of life.
*In a statement from Unilever to Allure regarding older Fair & Lovely ads: “We know that there is a lot of historic advertising available on the internet - these ads are not aligned with the values of the brand today. We continue to evolve the brand’s advertising to feature women of different skin tones.” In regards to more recent ads on YouTube: “This page is being updated in the next couple of weeks with our new branding"
Darian: Do men in India still face the same pressure to be light that women do?
Nina: Absolutely. There is a product called Fair & Handsome that one of the biggest Bollywood celebrities [Shah Rukh Khan] promotes. I think it's not as talked about, but I remember when we were filming, there was a young gentleman I was speaking with who had darker skin and he was looking to get married. He told me, “I don't want someone with fair skin because if I marry someone lighter than me, it will make me feel insecure. People will say she's out of my league. I don't want to go through life feeling insecure.”
Darian: Let's talk about the open letter that you wrote to the president of Unilever. I am curious about what was the initial tipping point for you.
Nina: We started releasing episodes of #COMPLEXion beginning in May. Towards the end of May and beginning of June, we found out about the death of George Floyd and Black Lives Matter protests were underway. This sparked discussion around colorism in my own community and how we’re addressing racism. And so I started a petition called “See My Complexion.” And it was speaking out against the skin whitening companies, the top four with the highest distribution, and that’s Unilever, Procter & Gamble, L'Oreal, and Johnson & Johnson, as well as the Bollywood industry. You can't say that Black lives matter in one part of the world and actively promote a skin whitening product in another part of the world.
The first trickle effect was the week after, Johnson & Johnson announced that they were dropping their entire line. I do have to point out that this has been years of work for many people to get these products changed or banned. For me, that letter was a moment of… I wanted people to see the faces behind who was using their products and how this was affecting them. And unfortunately, a lot of their hopes and dreams are built on this ideology that they have to be fair-skinned. And so writing this letter, I took the angle of: you have to just see the faces behind who is buying your products. It it worth it for you as a company to prey on this archaic notion of colorism when you know how it's affecting the people that are buying it?
Darian: What next steps would you like to see from Fair & Lovely?
Nina: I think that the name change is not enough, just to call it Glow & Lovely. Which is what they announced. I remember seeing package when we were filming in January… it still the Fair & Lovely packaging but it said, “Fair & Lovely Winter Glow.” If the message is still the same, that doesn't change anything. The way that they roll out their new branding campaigns, will we be seeing darker skin complexions on their packaging?
It’s also about the ideology behind why people are buying these products and that’s part of the issue. I think as far as the next steps, I would like to see conversations happen, and have brands be more transparent with their campaigns, and how they're actively trying to dismantle this.