Author Archives: ZohraMoshtaq

Fair & Lovely Cream

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Original Ad

The recent ad published on an eastern Indian magazine summer 2017 edition contained an advertisement for a cream called “fair and lovely.” The problem with this ad is that it take promotes unrealistic beauty trends among young aged girls and women not only in India, but also around the world. Written in red bold font, stated its name making visible for their consumers along side with a pale photoshoped Indian actor as its brand ambassador. “Fair & Lovely” is a multi million company operating by Hindustan Lever Limited since 1973. This company is promoting insecurity to women, especially, women of colour targeting tanned, brown, and dark skin Indian women. There are promoting fair skin, that increases self-doubt and decreasing self esteem of women who do not have the pale skin as the model on the package. This can raise problem within the meaning of beauty among different women with various skin tone. Fair and lovely are fostering beauty as having lighter skin giving the impression and the need to have fair skin. This advertisement of this product plays with costumer’s emotions in order to sell the product. These creams are not only harmful to women’s emotional state, but also damaging to their layers of skin. This cream contains harmful ingredients such as steroids, bleaching agents, mercury, and many other harmful products that help lighten the skin colour. It gives the impression as of there is something wrong with having dark skin tone and this cream is the solution for it. Therefore, the consumers of this product are dark and ugly and by purchasing this cream, women can become white and beautiful ignoring all the other aspect of what make a woman beautiful. This sort of advertising illustrates that their natural skin tone is not considered to be ‘lovely’ or ‘beautiful’ and by using a white packaged cream will make your skin ‘fair’ or ‘white’ that is more acceptable.

The Hidden Massage

Final Edit

First, I edited the ad to demonstrate the message fair and lovely cream is portraying. In this edit, I changed the title from ‘fair and lovely’ to ‘White and Beautiful.’ I made this change because those may not be the exact words on the package but does illustrate the same message. On the original advisement, a picture of an Indian actor is displayed transitioning from a already light skin to the finish look, which is completely pale. I replaced that final look image with a picture of Paris Hilton, which is the actual goal of becoming a causation woman with the use of this cream. This is the hidden technique used through commercial marketing in attempt to sent dissident message to better sell their product. Finally, I re-edited the original ad to how it actually should be. I replaced the title to “Natural and Healthy” to illustrate that we should be using a cream to moisturize our skin to keep it hydrated and fresh in its natural tone. This is to promote and help women to embrace their own skin tone and build confidence beyond the surface of their skin. I replaced the final look image with Mindy Kaling to demonstrate that a dark skinned woman is as beautiful and can achieve anything she can put her mind to.