The complexities of complexion: a cultural geography of skin colour and beauty products

Abstract

This article explores the discriminatory and exclusionary nature of many advertisement campaigns for skin-lightening products. It employs textual analysis to examine a television advertisement for the product ‘Fair & Lovely’. The article explains how this particular advert serves to articulate both imperial and neo-imperial discourses. Analysis of the advertisement is used as a basis for a wider discussion of India's ‘fairness complex’ and the complexities of complexion from a postcolonial perspective. The article demonstrates that imperialism – ancient and modern – and neoimperial/globalisation discourses have provided the socio-cultural framework in which associations between white skin and beauty, wealth and success have developed.

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