Fairness creams get a bad rap. If they’re not racially dividing the country, they are lowering self-esteem, embedding patriarchy, consigning women as sex objects, etc etc. Heck, they are probably to blame for vote rigging during the upazila polls as well. What our unfair detractors don’t seem to know, or care, is that the debate is seldom black and white.
First item on the charge sheet is that fairness creams contribute to a kind of racism. I’ll be the first one to admit that they kind of do. Bangladeshi society loves, nay worships, fair skin. Any product that plays on our obsession with a particular skin tone is obviously partly responsible for engendering societal blinkers. After all, you don’t walk down a Bangladeshi departmental store aisle and see a lot of skin tanning lotions.
But walk down the same aisle and you will see a gazillion products that basically serve the same purpose as a whitening cream: They accentuate one part of your body, and cater to a stereotype that has been perpetuated long before skin whitening creams entered the local markets. Want luscious lips, cherubic cheeks, enticing eyes, and a free (sugar-free) candy bar with it as well? Yes, we have them all, and we have been gleefully buying them over centuries without feminists and marketing Nazis breathing down upon our collective necks.
Bottom line is, a fairness cream is a cosmetic product that totes the marketing line that it will make you aesthetically pleasing. And like any other successful cosmetic product, the rules of how it works is based on a narrow definition of what we, as a society, find attractive and appealing, and then shoving ourselves into that category.
Don’t want to play the game? Perfectly fine, just discard all makeup then, don’t just pick on our poor buddy the fairness gel. The irony of course is that when you are typing an article on fairness cream promoting hypocrisy with your perfectly manicured hands using that trendy nail polish, you are a hypocrite yourself.
But my biggest gripe about the morality police trying to handcuff fairness cream peddlers and junkies is the patronising and condescending tone they bring to the table. A consumer of any product by definition exhibits rational behaviour. A quick caveat: By rational I do not mean the Spock-induced variety where every decision is logically debated, pros and cons weighed, and a consensus is reached where the benefits of buying a Pran mango bar outweigh the costs (why would anyone NOT buy a Pran mango bar, they are awesome!)
Rather, a rational consumer is one who is conscious about what is best for her, and in the grand scheme of things, will end up making decisions that cater to her best interests. Always.
Are fairness creams part of that equation that guarantees an elixir, or does it just make you a pawn in a (fairness-obsessed) man’s game? It’s up to the consumer to decide. Appealing that fairness products be banned because they promote racism and sexism, a society that judges you by the colour of your skin, all miss one single point: Skin whitening products exist not because evil companies force us to use them, they exist because we want to use them.
And here is the crux of the problem with all that finger wagging. If you want to ban a product that you think sends all the wrong messages to the public in large, what’s to stop someone else from trying to ban something that you may think is sending all the right signals? Video games for kids might make them violent, but they also promote tech savviness and expedite decision-making skills. A product that you find fulsome may be wholesome to someone else.
The solution, of course, would be to let the invisible hand do all the picking. If people really find fairness creams repulsive, they will stop buying them in the long run, and eventually evil companies will go bankrupt. No amount of hurtling abuse, pleading sanity, or downright banning has made any impact on people smoking, drinking, or gambling. Why do you think your moralising and demonising fairness creams would work any better? Caveat emptor, I say!
A fairness cream, a bottle of wine, or a cigar may do all kinds of mischief and promote all the wrong messages. But moral policing and calling outright bans on them is not the answer. If you want consumers to make informed choices, give us information, not opinions or your disapproval. Just give us the facts, man.
