Darker shades of “fairness” in India: Male attractiveness and colorism in commercials

Abstract

The skin-lightening products for men in India and their mode of advertising have been shaping the concept of attractiveness for Indian men by portraying lighter skin tone as the most fundamental quality of being attractive, always desirable, and successful. Although women’s skin-lightening products in India have received attention by a few scholars lately, men’s products are still underresearched. Hence, this study aims to investigate the issue of colorism augmented by television commercials for men’s “fairness” (light skin tone) products in India. The primary data for this study are six Hindi television commercials for men’s skin-lightening products which were broadcast from 2005 to 2015 and were available on YouTube during data collection. The commercials are by one popular brand, Emami Fair and Handsome. The target commercials are significant for their categorical distinction in directness as well as for their nature of storytelling that helps facilitate the discourse of colorism itself. The methodology is a combination of multimodal analysis, critical discourse analysis, and advertisement analysis. The overall goal of this study is to bring visibility to this subtle and multilayered problem of colorism in Indian society which is being reinforced by the skin-lightening products for men.

Keywords

• critical discourse analysis
• colorism
• multimodal analysis
• discrimination
• india
• skin-lightening products
• men