One of Bollywood's biggest film stars is being criticised by Asian campaigners for promoting a skin-lightening cream - a product that is now on the shelves of British shops.
The 40-second advertisement from India starts like so many others promoting razors or hair dye - but it's an ad with a very big difference.
There's a man who has no luck with the girls. He has markedly darker skin than his friends and the girl he is after. In a real song-and-dance Bollywood extravaganza, one of the biggest heart throbs of Indian cinema, Shahrukh Khan, hands over a cream to the hapless chap, along with some mild admonishment. Within a few weeks, the young man has turned much lighter-skinned and confident. As he strides down the road like a modern-day answer to John Travolta in Saturday Night Fever, the girls start flocking to him and chanting: "Hi handsome, hi handsome." Khan comes back into view with the product, Fair and Handsome.
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September 26, 2007
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4 comments:
Shame, I used to like Sharukh Khan. I never thought it was a big issue for men to be "fair-skinned", it's always more of a female stereotype "you'll never get married if you're not fair".
in a related story ..
naomi campbell's racism claims
no it is an issue for men .. i remember when i read the autobiography of malcolm x .. how he used to talk about how black males at the time used to "conk" (a process that involves putting chemicals mainly lye) on their hair to straighten it so they could look more white .. and they would wear do-rags so the hair would stay straight .. it was a painstaking process ..
i blame the white man :D
I wonder what a right-wing and anti-Arab enthusiast , nicknamed " Marvin the Martian " (http://www.peanutbutterandpickles.blogspot.com/ ) is doing around in Arab blogs. Is this an enemy fact-finding mission??
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