“I have no mercy or compassion in me for a society that will crush people, and then penalize them for not being able to stand up under the weight.”
— Malcolm X
In the Indian subcontinent, fairness is presented as the standard of feminine beauty. This is the outcome of the racial colonial legacy that rationalized British rule by upholding white supremacy and stigmatized brownness as a marker of inferiority. The paper has dissected “Fair & Lovely” advertisement (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dGepwMtV7R8) through structural and semiotic lens by building upon Naomi Wolf’s “Beauty Myth”, Sandra Bartky’s “Foucault, Femininity and the Modernization of Patriarchal Power” and Nancy Leong’s “Racial Capitalism”. “Fair & Lovely” harnesses these gendered racial anxieties in the service of capitalist consumerism. This is achieved through the creation of fantasy in which professional success of women is made contingent upon possessing a fair complexion. In this process women are objectified and stereotyped as objects of the male gaze. The paper highlights the intersection of patriarchal structures, female objectification and colonial racial legacy in the construction of the oppression and marginalization of a brown woman.
The advertisement revolves around a brown girl, Manju, who wants to become a collector. The teacher informs her that “Sirf parhai se kaam nahe chale ga, interview ka samna bhe karna parega.” Therefore, in a subtle manner, the teacher has propagated the dominant racist ideological structure that talent and hard work are not enough for a woman. Manju will shine out if only she has physical beauty as well. This physical beauty as a matter of fact is the fair skin which she lacks. Borrowing from Sandra Bartky (2003), this paper calls this cultural discourse normative white femininity – the white capitalist patriarchal compulsion to adopt styles and attitudes consistent with an imposed white feminine aesthetic. This compulsion is a central element in the reproduction of whiteness and white femininity. Here, the insidiousness that whiteness plays in constructing white femininity as normative can be seen as a complex intersection of race and gender. This formulates whiteness as a mark of power and brownness as inferiority. “Fair & lovely” steps in here to hijack this idea of white supremacy to sale their product in a post-colonial country.
In the above paragraph, the remnants of colonial legacy are evident that it is a white woman’s world. Therefore, this message is reinforced by the fact that Manju’s brown skin is noticeably absent in dominant cultural representations of beauty or when highlighted, it is either whitified, contextualized in otherness or distorted. Therefore, she chooses to become fair and shed her own brown skin. All things considered, the models of feminine beauty i.e. white women (sterilized of any “ethnic” identification) occupy the apex of a beauty hierarchy. It is the white beauty that becomes normative (Collins 2004). Hence, Manju has to be “fair” to become a collector. An important point to highlight here is Manju’s complicity with the idea of white skin as being supreme standard of beauty. Sally Markowitz argues, and I concur, “It is not difficult, after all, to find a pronounced racial component to the idea of femininity itself: to be truly feminine is, in many ways, to be white.” Manju has accustomed herself to this idea of whiteness as being normative beauty and uses ‘Fair & Lovely’ to achieve that. When told about the interview, Manju tells her teacher “jee mujhe pata hai, aur mein tayar houn”, this is also consistent with Gramsci’s 1971 concept of hegemony, where domination of the ruled is internalized as an unquestioned feature of their own moral conscience. She in fact stands as the representative of brown women who self-regulate to fit into the standard and policing regimes of patriarchal defined beauty. Additionally, by the end of the advertisement Manju suggests a young girl that “tum hi ho wo chabbi”, which means that she too has to become fair to become “like her”. Hence the cycle continues. Thus, race and concept of femininity intersect under the umbrella of capitalism and patriarchy to uphold white supremacy.
In the light of previous paragraph, meanwhile focusing on Naomi Wolf’s “Myth of Beauty”, I have now connected race with patriarchy because both of them function together to maintain white skin hegemony and sustain its position as normative femininity. Patriarchy has successfully appropriated beauty, health and fitness. The “beauty myth”, perpetuated by tools of masculine culture, indoctrinates young girls into believing that their identity “must be premised upon their beauty” (Wolf, 4) Accordingly, Manju’s success is directly linked to the “interview” she has to clear. This interview is in the hands of the “men” who represent the patriarchal forces operating to regulate women’s lives. The men in the advertisement focus on Manju’s fair skin more than they do on her credentials. The advertisement has reduced Manju’s femininity to mere desire for white skin. White femininity is positioned as normative because it is not seen as whole per se but rather as just femininity. Manju’s interview normalizes the stereotyping of women as objects of desire. Moreover, Manju is also complicit with this objectification and commodification because according to Wolf the beauty backlash is disseminated and legitimated “by the cycles of self-hatred provoked in women by the advertisements, photo features and beauty copy in the glossies” (Wolf, 55). In this regard, masculine culture paints a picture of what women should look like. Similar to Wolf, Helene Cixous argues that patriarchy metaphorically declares to women: “We’re going to do your portrait so that you can begin looking like it right away” (Cixous, 892). Consequently, patriarchy reinforces racial discrimination to subvert brown woman.
Furthering this discussion, I have built upon Nancy Leong’s concept of “Racial Capitalism”, it contends that non-white races has been commodified so that white people can benefit from it. In literal terms, racial capitalism is the process in which social or economic value is derived from the racial identity of another person. Leong strictly sees how White race; be it people or institutions commodifies non-white race to extract benefit from them. She is of the view that commodification of racial identity precedes and enables racial capitalism, but racial capitalism instantiates the commodification of race and intensifies its harms. In the advertisement, commodification of brown race, especially women is evident. The private company, ‘Fair & Lovely’, has hijacked gendered racial anxiety of brown women, it then capitalized on it to sale the product. It promised an illusion of white skin in “12 Rupees”, by making it cheap it profits off lower and middle class’ hard earned money. This makes the private company earn more by exploiting the non-whiteness of a race for its market value. The promise of “naya hai rang … naya hai zammana” sits well with Gramsci’s notion of cultural hegemony that the brown woman, Manju, gives her “consent” to be dominated on the basis of her skin color as she has been promised white femininity in return. This illusion lets the white skin supremacy stay intact thus non-white skin is commodified. Racial Capitalism also plays upon the concept of material success of a woman. Through its rectification of skin bias and racial anxiety, fair and lovely has also confiscated the concept of success to sale its product. The advertisement has designed a structure which supports the ideology that for a woman to step up a social ladder, she needs to have lighter skin. Manju at one point says “har din jam k mehnat karungi, har din fair and lovely se jam k mehnat karwaun mein”, this sentence hints towards an underlying structure that has directly linked success and hard work with the color of skin. Talent alone cannot survive in this capitalist society; a woman needs to be fair as well. This structure helps private companies like ‘Fair & Lovely’ to sell their products in bulks whereas the skin color of the consumer still remains the same. This speaks volumes about the underlying racist structure that benefits off the racial binary between whites and non-whites. Thus Leong’s discourse that Affiliation with nonwhite individuals is merely a useful means for white individuals and predominantly white institutions to acquire social and economic benefits only fits the context of the advertisement perfectly.
It can be concluded that this imperfect world is stained by a structure which has a blotch of racial capitalism and patriarchy therefore an immediate and wholesale de-commodification of identity is not possible. It would have negative consequences and the racial hierarchies will still stay put. Moreover, no instantaneous endeavor can eradicate racial capitalism and anxiety in non-white races neither can it decimate white supremacy. A pragmatic approach is required to engage with this hegemonic structure where the first step shall be discouragement of any such capitalization and exploitation. The problematic aspects of this edifice and also the ideology need to be explicitly called out and attention has to be brought to the harm it causes to non-white women like Manju. The negotiation of racial value shall be structured in such a manner that would deter future oppression. The conversation about hegemony, power and empire can reach deeper levels of analysis. By linking the multiple entwined systems of oppression and subjugation that influence the ways in addressing this ideological structure, the interrogating these beauty standards, a larger accurate critical framework can be developed in which power dynamics and human relationships are conducted. Investigating these issues leads to more developed, critically conscious lens to better analyze the intersecting nature of multiple societal systems upon our physical bodies.
References:
Acquaye, Alisha. “How Beauty Brands are Profiting Off Racism.” 26 January 2018. Teenvogue. https://www.teenvogue.com/story/how-beauty-brands-are-proffiting-off racism. 17 April 2019.
Collins, Patricia Hill. “Very Necessary: Redefining Black Gender Ideology,” Black Sexual Politics: African-Americans, Gender & The New Racism. New York: Routledge, 2004, pp.181-212.
Aidi, Abdellatif El and Dr. Yahya Yechouti. “Antonion Gramsci’s Theory of Cultural Hegemony in Edward Said’s Orientalism.” Galaxyimrj.com (2017).
Deliovsky, Kathy. “Normative White Femininity: Race,Gender and the Political Beauty.” Harper Collins (2002).
Lee, Sandra Bartky. “Foucault,Femininity and the modernization of Patriarchal Power.” Writing on the body : Female embodiment and feminist theory (1997): 129-154.
Wolf, Naomi. The Beauty Myth. New York: Harper Collins, 1991.
Unlearn Racism:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LOccdzGw8MU https://resourcegeneration.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/2016-dRworks-workbook.pdf https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5NHeFgaVWs8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gEoN8dFaa8Y
Hafsa Usmani 