Unilever to remove 'whitening' and 'fairness'; Shaadi.com removes fairness filter
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One of the most common products in India, the "Fair and Lovely" brand, will also be renamed in the next few months.
To show solidarity towards the ongoing protests around the world against the racial discrimination that the African community faces worldwide, Unilever has decided to remove few misleading and discriminatory words from their products' packets.
On Thursday, Unilever announced that the company has decided to take skin care portfolio to the next level as they aim to make it a racism-free line of products.
The company will be removing words such as ‘fair/fairness’, ‘white/whitening’, and ‘light/lightening’ from its products;' packs and communication.
One of the most common products in India, the "Fair and Lovely" brand, will also be renamed and relabeled in the next few months.
Sunny Jain, President Beauty and Personal Care, said, “We are fully committed to having a global portfolio of skin care brands that is inclusive and cares for all skin tones, celebrating greater diversity of beauty. 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’re evolving the way that we communicate the skin benefits of our products that deliver radiant and even tone skin, it’s also important to change the language we use.”
The brand has been aiming towards a more inclusive approach for few years now, the company claims. The officials said that while the company has, till now, been focusing on women impowerment, they will also stand up for the minority communities now.
“We have been working on the evolution of our Fair & Lovely brand, which is sold across Asia, progressively moving to a more inclusive vision of beauty that celebrates skin glow. We have changed the advertising, communication and – more recently – the packaging in South Asia, and we think it’s important that we now share the next step that we have been working on: changing the brand name. We will also continue to evolve our advertising, to feature women of different skin tones, representative of the variety of beauty across India and other countries. We want Fair & Lovely to become a brand that celebrates glowing and radiant skin, regardless of skin tone,” added Jain.
Following criticism from an online petition and social media, an Indian matrimony website, Shaadi.com too has decided to remove a search filter labelled 'fairness'. The search filter allowed people to demand for specific skin tones, which has faced backlash in the past too.
The decisions come after protests erupted all over the world, starting from the US, after an unarmed African American man was brutally murdered by an American police cop.