‘Fair & Lovely’ cream rebranded‘Glow & Lovely’
Saturday, March 7, 2020 IST
The face cream previously called Fair & Lovely will be called Glow & Lovely, the company said in an emailed statement. A men’s version will be renamed Glow & Handsome.
The marketing pitch for Fair & Lovely has been rooted in deeply entrenched concepts of beauty in India -- the company’s second-largest market after the U.S. -- where darker skin is viewed as undesirable and often associated with people at the bottom of Hinduisim’s caste system. Matrimonial advertisements in India’s largest newspapers routinely specify the need for a “fair” bride.
As India’s leading whitening cream, Fair & Lovely has been a regular target for social media activists over the years. Television cooking-show host Padma Lakshmi last month tweeted that the makers of the product needed to “pack their fake cosmetics and GO!!” A previous campaign saw dark-skinned women post pictures of themselves under the hashtag #unfairandlovely in 2016.
The rebranded products will be on store shelves in the coming months. The terms “fair,” “whitening,” and “lightening,” will also be removed from packaging and marketing materials, the company has said.
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