India’s beauty industry thrives on the country’s ugly obsession with fair complexions and skin lightening products. Prejudice against darker skinned people, especially women, is not a new phenomenon but one that has been deeply rooted in our culture, be it due to some sort of colonial hangover that has loomed over our society for hundred of years now, or as some reports state it to be tracing back to the caste system. Young girls growing up and being told that having fair skin determines the quality of their life distorts their sense of self and ingrains what’s basically racism and colourism at a psychological level. While on one hand fairness creams continue their absurd campaigns of ideal beauty and matrimonial sites demand fair-skinned prospective brides, there is a growing counter movement destabilising the fairness illusion that has clouded India for far too long.

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