[lbo-talk] Skin lightening cream commercial from India, 'with American double strength'

dredmond at efn.org dredmond at efn.org
Sat Sep 29 13:58:25 PDT 2007


On Sat, September 29, 2007 11:33 am, B. wrote:


> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NZpTdDLeHS8
>
> Cream promises to make darker complexions into lighter
> skin tone. With "American double strength." (Ad above is subtitled.)

I'm no expert on India, but... this has been going on within India's neoliberal elites for some time - yesterday it was British crumpets and Oxford accents, today its skin cream and American slang. Many of the Bollywood stars of yore were shot to look Anglo-American, and there's also been something of a long-term whitening process - instead of brown-skinned stars like Nargis, one of the great actresses of the century, there are increasing numbers of lily-white US-style pinups of lesser status, e.g. Aishawarya Rai.

Fortunately, India's media is still hugely diverse, and there's still lots of resistance to the neoliberal variant of whiteness, even within the rarefied confines of Bollywood (which is only 20% of India's film industry).

-- DRR



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