The British may have left India almost a century ago, but they also left behind a massive colonial hangover in their wake that we refuse to shake off. One of the most glaring examples of it is our obsession with fair skin. If the commercials and hoardings for fairness creams were not enough evidence, some stats would bolster this assumption better. The women’s fairness cream market in India, an ever growing mammoth, is expected to reportedly gross revenues of over Rs 5,000 crore by 2023.
Having already been influenced by media, cinema and cultural conditioning that portray fair skin as the quintessential beauty attribute, consumers too easily give in to various gimmicks of cosmetic companies. However, in the frenzy to be the fairest of them all, the onslaught of these fairness products on the skin often gets overlooked.