Hindustan Unilever has announced that it will be rebranding its skin lightening fairness cream ‘Fair and Lovely’ to ‘Glow and Lovely’, following the recent protests against racial discrimination.
It all started after the George Floyd incident, which sparked ‘Black Lives Matter’ protests all over the world. This was followed by another worldwide outcry against discrimination against people of colour, and the unfair glorification of the lighter-skinned population. Following this, people also started addressing the notion of fairness creams and the need for change in that arena.
As a result, Hindustan Unilever changed there skin lightening creams from names like ‘Fair and Lovely’ and ‘Fair and Handsome’, to ‘ Glow and Lovely’ and ‘ Glow and Handsome’.“We recognise that the use of the words ‘fair’, ‘white’ and ‘light’ suggest a singular ideal of beauty that we don’t think is right, and we want to address this. As we are evolving the way that we communicate the skin benefits of our products that deliver radiant and even-toned skin, it’s also important to change the language we use,” said Sunny Jain, President, Beauty and Personal Care, Unilever.
This move comes a week after the maker of Lipton Tea and Dove soap announced that it would drop words such as “fair,” “fairness,” “white,”, “whitening” from its marketing in a push to move away from a single ideal of beauty. While these moves have been widely appreciated, they have also sparked tweets and memes trolling these from people all over the world.