Some years ago the world was under a frenzy of deciding if Black Lives Matter or all lives matter. That moment, however, sparked an overdue reckoning around racism driven by corporates. J&J dropped their skin whitening product line completely. The telling part, though, is how many companies simply decided that dropping the word "fair" from their packaging and brand guidelines would suffice.
Corporates aren't the only ones to be blamed. If these beauty products weren't available, we would have scouted for alternatives that promise to address that purpose. After all, we are a country where pregnant women are advised to drink milk with Kesar so that kids are born fair. This contempt for dark skin is so deep rooted in us that it's not hard to see that a villain in a Bollywood movie is a South Indian and the villains in South Indian movies are Africans. It is as if we have a dark color shade card in our mind, and anyone who is at a lighter shade level thinks the ones darker to him are inferior. But when did this prejudice against dark shades start in India? Ancient India is a dichotomy, they had Varnas and they also had dark skinned Gods. Things would have changed a little when fairer Mughal rulers started ruling India, but they never had a complete stranglehold on the entire country. British Raj amplified one side of that dichotomy.
Britishers thought it was the white man's burden to teach civility to the dark colored beasts. They even conducted scientific experiments to prove the supremacy of the white race. White skinned Britishers were the people in power and with the average Indians' penchant to suck up to people in power, we subconsciously started associating lighter skin tone to be superior. This passed on from generations to generations, aided by the thirst for money from the corporate India.
Men were ~25% users of skin products much before dedicated product lines were developed for them. There was product after product developed to turn everything fairer. Creams, soaps, serums, lotions, talcums, even vaginal skin whitening solutions. Companies gave the issue a product, price point, place and a lot of promotion.
The next time you tap on filters on your Instagram post to brush something up, think about how your mind is literally playing tricks with you. The day when a communication will claim that using a product will create a glowing halo surrounding the face, like how Gods have them is not too far. If you think this is far-fetched, next time when you visit a recently constructed temple, notice how our Gods have turned fair.