Got a job interview on the horizon? Dump your qualifications, forget about brushing on GK, leave your confidence at home, save your etiquette for a party. Because these attributes will never get you the job. What you need to do is to work on your complexion. Buy that tube of fairness cream and lather it all over your face. This is your only hope for bagging the job. That, at least, is the message being beamed to thousands of young Indian women.Imagine such a mindset being so assiduously cultivated at a time when women in this country are doing extremely well in terms of professional achievement. In an era of Kalpana Chawla and Naina Lal Kidwai, this harping on a fair complexion appears not just regressive but totally out of sync with the general reality.The very discrimination between looks and achievement makes one wonder how many decades advertisers wish to take us back to. They don’t realise that their messages both demean women and discriminate against those from the south who are naturally endowed with darker skins. Either it is a serious lack of creativity and sensitivity, or just a low IQ that prompts these dream merchants to mock Indian skin tones. If women were to use such creams out of fear of rejection or because of a longing to acquire that Cinderella look, then nature may as well take a back seat because we are now equipped with the power of mass producing human beings!The media, which influences youngsters considerably, ends up affecting their ability to think rationally. It is in fact ‘TV mindsets’ that predominate. So when ad professionals take the easy way out and link assurance of employment with fairer skin tones, they perpetrate a great deal of damage by misleading people and contributing to social prejudice.Youngsters should respond to this outrage by letting their distaste for ads like these be known. The myth that fairness creams guarantees a light complexion and that fair skins guarantee better jobs must be trashed, once and for all. Sure, the manufacturers of these products can continue selling their wares. But these products must be projected as feel good commodities and not as absolute necessities.As for ad professionals, they must be more sensitive to human emotions. Clearly, many of our ad men and women are invested with enormous creative talent. They should learn to use some of that to convey messages that do not offend or distort. They must remember that young minds are impressionable minds and ensure that their messages are wholesome and rational.The writer is a college student
