We are glad ‘Fair & Lovely’ have taken one step against colour  prejudice: Bollywood Actresses

Fair & Lovely the  long-in-use  cosmetic  cream for women claiming  to lighten the skin complexion, has dropped  ‘Fair’ from its brand name.Bollywood’s  prominent  actresses , many of them  proudly  dark in complexion, react.

Taapsee Pannu:  “I am glad they have taken one step towards this direction. And from here on I hope they do enough in their capacity to make their customer also understand that fairness has got nothing to do with being lovely.”

Urmila  Matondkar: “The  belief that  fair  is lovely needs to be lifted from people‘s minds, and   not just from slogans. But it’s a good start towards a process that’s going to be long and  hard.”

Nandita Das:  “While the move may be more symbolic, as there is no mention of discontinuing the product, just the change in messaging is still a big step forward. In India, many brands spend hundreds of crores of rupees to spread the deeply problematic message of fair being lovely, in a largely dark country. So, when the market leader changes track, it needs to be welcomed. At the very least, it will lead to an even wider debate.”

 Usha Jadav: “It is a  ‘fair’ decision’  A welcome  step in a long battle  against  colour  prejudice. I hope the  entertainment industry  will stop casting  light-skinned actors  in roles  requiring dark-skinned  characters. If  ‘black lives matter’ then prove  it.The  issue of colour discrimination has  been  with us  from time-immemorial.  If a  girl is  born with dark skin  she is  smeared with chandan and  haldi in the  hope that she would  get fair-skinned.  Parents with  dark-skinned daughters are under  tremendous stress.  We are  obsessed with light skin. We must  collectively understand that only the fair-skinned  are  not beautiful.”

 Ahana Kumra:  “It was  a very happy moment for me to hear they’ve changed the name  of  UniLever’s highest-selling product. I have worked  with  UniLever and  I know skin lightening  is a very  lucrative  industry. The  widespread  belief that  fair skin is synonymous with beauty is deep-rooted  in our society. I am glad this belief is being questioned. From  school  itself colour  prejudice needs  to be tackled.  Although renaming  the ‘fairness’ cream is a sensible  decision, it’s not  really going to solve the  problem.”

Neena  Gupta:  “Yeh toh bahot achchi  baat hai. Bahot pehle hona chahiye tttha. But will this change the  mindset  of  the bride seeker who wants a  fairskinned  marital partner?  It’s  the mind that needs to erase  colour prejudice.”

Meeta Vashisht:  “High time! I had objected to the whole concept twenty years ago..and then really despaired when ‘fair and handsome’ came and SRK modelled for it…In 2001 had written a song for a play I had directed for trafficked minors in a remand home in Mumbai..critiquing the ‘fair and lovely laga’ line.Really impressed by the young woman who filed a case to have it removed…qudos to this wonderful generation of youngsters.”

Manisha  Koirala: “A lot of people are being conscious of how concepts of   beauty can either divide or make people feel inferior .. skin colour, weight , age  etc ..a time has come where people are righly objecting to shaming people for who they are and  how they look!!  There is beauty in every skin colour, weight or age.”

Dia Mirza:  “If it is a skin lightening/brightening creme then by merely dropping a word I’m unsure if it will successfully change the mindset that fair-skinned is beautiful. Dropping ‘fair’ is the beginning of a change that is necessary and essential.”

Celina Jaitley:  “If you want to purchase racism then that’s the prefect cosmetic for it. This was long overdue, Fairness creams nurtured an entire generation of women hating themselves for their god given skin colour inculcating self confidence issues and making one skin colourmore superior to the other. Shouldn’t women be just “LOVELY” in all their glory ? Shouldn’t we be celebrating every skin colour and every hair texture ?”

Maanvi Gagroo:  “It’s a good start, even if a token gesture. However the problem was never the name, alone. It’s the idea that only one skin colour is beautiful & aspirational  being perpetuated in a consumer’s psyche that’s problematic. Hopefully, there’ll be a decline in demand for fairness creams. The ball’s in the consumers’ court now.”

Meera  Chopra:  “I think it’s a very ‘fair’ change to be dropping the word fair from Fair & Lovely, because  that phrase in itself is very racist which indirectly looks down upon dark colour and shouts out  that dark cannot be lovely. We as a nation from generations have been obsessed with fair skin. I still get recommendations for using  creams or pills to lighten my skin color from my dermatologist, and I wonder why this obsession with fairness. So high-time we stop promoting, using such discriminatory products because   honestly it’s not the ‘fairness’ of the skin but its the ‘fairness’ of the soul that matters. And by the way, we still have something called Fair & Handsome too.”