Fair and Lovely

Once upon a time there was a girl called Aliya. She lived in a city in Pakistan, and she had everything she could have ever wanted. Except, that is, for a fair complexion. Even though Aliya was a perfectly attractive girl, she would never be called beautiful. In fact, when people described her, they would always say: “Aliya! Such a nice girl… lovely manners… so sweet… but…” (and they would lower their voices here) “She’s a little on the dark side.”

This is no fairytale; it goes on in a thousand homes across a thousand cities in the Subcontinent. It’s something that I have always wanted to protest against, ever since I was a child and saw my first “Fair and Lovely” ad. In those days, Zia had a draconian grip on the media, and so the purveyors of this magical potion were limited to print ads, portraying a girl transformed from beast to beauty because she had used the product to lighten her complexion (or vice versa if she failed to make use of said product).

The black ink of the newspaper inevitably leaked onto the model’s fair face, giving her a grey appearance that somewhat ruined the effect. But I still remember being scandalized by the idea that a woman would put creams or bleaches on her delicate skin in order to change its hue. (And at this point I would like to invite any artist or graphic designer to tell me exactly what color is “wheatish”, as I have not yet been able to figure it out. I am the daughter of a farmer, so I would like to pose the question: are there colors such as “mustardish”, “bananish”, “mangoish”, and “sugar-caneish” as well?)

I digress. I had forgotten about this concept, though, in between getting my degrees and carving out a career for myself. In America, no one ever told me that I was too dark and I ought to think about lightening my skin (I wasn’t friends with enough black women to know that they were told to lighten their skin, hair, and eyes for at least the last two hundred years). If anyone had dared to suggest my skin color was not pleasing, I would have given them two black eyes and then advised them to visit the nearest dermatologist for a very painful chemical peel. Even when I came back to Pakistan I had put the concept of skin lightening on a very low priority, along with going hunting for kangaroos and learning how to eat fire.

Recently, however, I was reminded of this by the spate of commercials that are now appearing on satellite TV, such as ARY, Indus Vision, PTV Prime, and the entire galaxy of Indian channels. Thanks to the wonders of television advertising coupled with modern technology and a more liberal attitude, these commercials are now able to actually tell a very important story in about thirty seconds.

The typical story goes like this (pay attention, girls): Aliya wants to get married, but she can’t, because she’s really dark, and no one will notice her – neither suitable boys or their mothers. Or, Aliya wants to find a job but she doesn’t, because she’s so dark that no one wants to hire her, despite her fantastic exam results and the job experience on her impressive resume.

So, in tears, she sits at the nearest café while a lighter-skinned friend consoles her. “Why don’t you try Fair and Lovely?” says the friend, pressing into Aliya’s dark hands a sachet of the cream, which is no doubt made of one part Philosopher’s Stone, one part moon dust, one part snow leopard genitals, and about ten parts mercury. “It worked for me. I was a leper in Darul Sakun, but now that I’ve used this and become fair, I’m a VJ for Indus Music.”

Aliya goes home, trembling and hopeful, and applies Fair and Lovely to her skin for six weeks, all the while refusing to leave her house or allow a single ray of sunlight to touch her skin. After six weeks, she comes out and voila! She has become fair. She has become lovely. She gets the job. Her friends tell her, “You have become so beautiful, your skin has become so fresh!” And she replies, with a coy tilt of her head, “Someone else has also noticed (kissi aur neh bhi tau notice kiya).

The music plays, Aliya smiles dazzlingly, and the voiceover intones, “Fair and Lovely… (Sub darvazey aap key liyey bhi khuljaingey)!” (All the doors will open for you too!)

If only I had a camera, I would film a sequel to this advertisement. Six months later, after twice daily applications of Fair and Lovely to her skin, poor Aliya is now shown pale and ghostlike, lying on her deathbed; the chemicals in the product have poisoned her to death. As her parents weep for her and her janaza is being performed, her two friends, who are dark-skinned, are whispering to each other: “She looks so beautiful and white… gorgeous… so pretty…”

And the voiceover will proclaim: “Now you know the houris’ secret… Fair and Lovely, (aap ki mauth key baad jannath key darvazey bhi khulyaingey)…” (After your death, even the doors of heaven will open for you!)

Because everyone knows that God only admits the fair to heaven, doesn’t He? The rest of us, the ones a little on the dark side, belong somewhere else.