When John Abraham called himself the ‘guilty party’ for promoting fairness creams while dating Bipasha Basu: ‘I was a little worried…’

Komal asked John, “You endorse fairness creams, Bipasha Basu is a dusky actress and you on the other hand, being her boyfriend, the two of you have plans to get married and you’re promoting a fairness cream, that too for men. How do these two things go together?”

Responding to the question, John tried defending his association, and said, “See, it is a very valid question. When the term fairness came up, I was a little worried and I spoke to (the fairness cream brand). If you look at the ad, through the ad fairness ka naam nahi liya hai (not used the word). It says fairness that is guaranteed, so I said no, let’s make it results that is guaranteed”

John then tried to explain what the term fairness means in India as he said, “The other thing is that, in India, you’ll be shocked at this because this is according to a market survey, fairness is a term which is colloquially used for removing blemishes. Removing the dark spots (on your face) is technically fairness. That’s what the term fairness means in India. The idea of this fairness cream was to remove these blemishes to make them two tones lighter, and we specifically maintained it in the ad as well.”

However, John them called himself a “guilty party” for endorsing a fairness brand and said, “Now, at the end of the day, we’re a fairness cream so we’re a guilty party. But we made sure that we don’t use it as an emotional quotient that if you become fair you’d get a girl…”

Bipasha, on the other hand, was always been vocal about the promotion of  fairness creams. In 202o, she had lauded one of India’s most popular fairness cream brands for dropping ‘Fair’ from their name. Taking to Instagram, she had written, “From the time I was growing up I heard this always, ‘Bonnie is darker than Soni. She is little dusky na?’ Even though my mother is a dusky beauty and I look a lot like her, I never knew why that would be a discussion by distant relatives when I was a kid.”

Bipasha had also shared how she was called an “exotic beauty” when she went for photoshoots abroad but was called “dusky” in India. “Soon at 15/ 16 I started modelling and then I won the supermodel contest … all newspapers read … dusky girl from Kolkata is the winner. I wondered again why Dusky is my first adjective ???”

Emphasising on the need to stop describing people by the colour of their skin, Bipasha had said, “Many skin care endorsements with loads of money was offered to me in the last 18 years (some were very tempting)… but I stuck to my principle always. All this needs to stop. This wrong dream that we are selling … that only fair is lovely and beautiful when the majority of the country is brown skinned. It’s a deep rooted stigma. It’s a mammoth step from the brand… and other brands should follow in the same footsteps soon🙏.”