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Fairness Gets a Tanning
Growth
in fairness creams has slowed down dramatically. Is this a sign of a nation
overcoming its dark skin complex or is it just an economic slowdown playing
spoilsport?
For long Khusboo Sinha resisted the temptation to
use a fairness cream but finally gave in this summer.
“I am not very fair. You can call me wheatish,” says the 27-year-old
Gurgaon-based software engineer in an unapologetic tone and a big grin as
she describes her skin tone. “I started quite late [using fairness cream],
but stopped rather quickly,” adds Sinha, who used a premium brand of
fairness cream for just three months. “I didn’t find it effective. It was
an utter waste of money.”
Is she worried that her colour could dent her
prospects, personal and professional? “I don’t believe creams make you
confident and presentable,” says Sinha. “Accept me the way I am and the way
I look or get lost.”
Marketers of fairness creams in a country obsessed
with skin colour would be forced to sit up and take notice of such apparent
and sudden disdain for their wares. After all till recently, this segment
in the skincare category boasted robust double-digit growth for years with
users — both men and women — evidently aspiring to look like Shah Rukh Khan
and Deepika Padukone .
Shades of Fairness
Of late, however, data suggests that Sinha may not be alone in her
rebellion against the cream that promises to make you fair. According to
numbers from research firm Nielsen, the fairness cream market has slowed
down in value terms and shrunk in volume terms over the past few quarters.
Meantime, the entire skin creams category is registering higher growth
(although it is also witnessing slowing sales).
The 2,940-crore fairness cream and lotion market
saw a negative growth of 4.5% in sales volumes over a year ago, according
to Nielsen’s moving annual total (MAT) sales for the year till June 2013.
Sales volumes of Hindustan Unile- ver’s Fair & Lovely Multivitamin, the
largest player in fairness cream with a market share of over 57%, dipped by
4.2%. And Emami’s Fair And Handsome cream for men declined by 14%.
In a results conference call with analysts for the
June-ended quarter, Nitin Paranjpe, MD and CEO of HUL, said: “The [HUL]
skincare story is a story of two parts. Ponds, Lakme and Dove have
continued to do well. But the overall growth in skincare, indeed the
overall growth in personal products, has been muted by Fair & Lovely.”
Fair & Lovely continues to strengthen its
competitive position in the mass skin lightening segment, an HUL
spokesperson said in a reply to emailed questions. “However, this is also
in the context of overall market growth [as reported by Nielsen] slowing
down in the face segment, impacting growth momentum of Fair & Lovely.”
Declining Sales
HUL is quick to dismiss the notion that the slowdown in fairness cream
sales is a result of consumers wisening up to the product’s claims. “There
is no data to indicate or suggest that consumers are becoming more mature
or moving away from fairness products. The largest benefit space continues
to be skin lightening,” says the spokesperson.
Equity analysts who make a living tracking the HUL
stock and its financials can’t make much sense of this phenomenon. “It’s
baffling,” says Amnish Aggarwal, senior vicepresident (research) at
Prabhudas Lilladher, a broking firm. Fairness creams is one of the very few
FMCG categories that have seen a sharp dip in sales, he explains.
“In fact, there has been no degrowth in many categories
within skincare segment such as facewash, bodywash and deodorants,” points
out Aggarwal. “The reason is difficult to comprehend, but definitely it
just can’t be attributed to either the economic slowdown or a cut in
discretionary spend by consumers,” adds the analyst.
One possible reason he conjectures is that the
positioning of fairness creams has become jaded.
“Now, most of the skin creams use the fairness plank. Age-defying creams,
for instance, too have a fairness component. So, the positioning of
pure-play fairness creams may have to change,” explains Aggarwal.
But what if the shift has nothing to with either
consumerist trends or marketing tactics; and much to do with a sociological
evolution of sorts, with the realisation dawning on the urban middle class
that fairness is not a passport to brighter marital prospects or indeed to
allround prosperity?
Coming of Age
Today’s generation is more health conscious than concerned about the
colour of the skin, says Ranjana Kumari, director of Centre for Social
Research, Delhi, who shrugs off the idea that fairness creams make Indians
confident. “Confidence comes from education. It comes from a sense of
accomplishment. It’s stupid to think that creams will make one confident.
Maybe consumers have started realising the long-term [side] effects of
using fairness creams,” adds Kumari.
Ankita Srivastava may be one such user. The
25-year-old IT professional used fairness creams for a few years, but has
now stopped because of scars that developed due to its prolonged use. “I
started using fairness creams when I was in class XII, as any other girl of
my age and my complexion [she calls herself mocha-coloured rather than
wheatish] would do to look fair and beautiful,” says Srivastava. “But I stopped
using creams a few months back because of the scars that developed. Creams
may make you fair, but they can never make you beautiful. That comes from
within.”
Social scientist Shiv Visvanathan reckons it is
still too early to say that Indians are maturing in their attitude to
fairness creams. “While the obsession of Indians with fairness is intact,
their belief in the effectiveness of white magic has certainly declined,”
says Visvanathan. Fair & Lovely has become like dalda, a generic for
fairness. There are thousands of such creams offering fairness, he adds.
If one goes by the matrimonial listings in the
newspapers and websites, one certainly gets an impression that the fixation
with skin colour is by and large intact. Whilst the word ‘dark’ is rarely
mentioned in descriptions of the advertiser or the desired spouse, the word
‘fair’ of course appears in generous doses.
Even in the case of grooms, tall dark and handsome
is not an aspiration in India; tall fair and handsome is what most brides
are seeking, says Sanjeev Kumar, business head of SimplyMarry.com,
a matrimonial website of Times Group, of which this magazine is a part.
“It is a common belief that if you are fair, you
will find a wonderful husband which will lead to successful marriage and
happiness,” says Kumar. While there is some evidence in popular culture
that this bias is changing, there is still a long way to go in changing the
mindset of the masses, he adds.
When Dark is Beautiful
Changing mindsets is what keeps Kavitha Emmanuel busy. Emmanuel is a
director at Women of Worth, a Chennai-based organisation that launched the
‘Dark is Beautiful’ campaign in 2009 to demolish the belief that a woman’s
worth is measured by her skin.
Emmanuel recently launched another campaign against
the latest TV commercial of Fair & Handsome, calling on Shah Rukh Khan
and Emami to suspend the advertisement. “This is not a campaign to showcase
who the offenders are because we all are,” says Emmanuel, adding that
stories of women being rejected by potential grooms because of skin colour
were the trigger for ‘Dark is Beautiful’. “This is a wake-up call that
draws our attention to its toxic effects and urges us to stand up for
change.”
A recent TV commercial of Fair And Handsome shows
its brand ambassador Shah Rukh Khan talking about his hard work to attain
zyada (more). The ad then shows Khan tossing a tube of the cream to an
aspiring young boy, suggesting that success depends on fairness.
“When it comes to addressing skin colour bias, we
need to remember that we let tradition and age-old practices take over our
logic and humaneness,” says Emmanuel, adding that she is not against
celebrities or them endorsing products.
Emami, for its part, says the relaunch of Fair And
Handsome in July has got very positive response. “We have an aggressive
marketing plan for increasing our market share in the fairness segment,”
says a company spokesperson.
In the second quarter, in an effort to prepare for
the relaunch of Fair And Handsome, “we faced a slight demand-supply issue
with our erstwhile product in the market for a short period, which led to a
temporary sluggishness,” adds the spokesperson, explaining the reason
behind the dip in sales.
While Bollywood stars may be busy endorsing
fairness creams and products, Emmanuel has got support from
actress-turned-activist Nandita Das, who has faced discrimination several
times due to her skin colour. “As a child,” recalls Das, “some far-off
relative would ask me not to go out in the sun and if I did I would become
darker.” But discrimination didn’t end with her childhood. It has grown and
assumed different forms.
“When I walk into a store that has cosmetics, they
[salespersons] come to me with the best anti-tan or fairness cream; or I am
told by the makeup man that I should not worry as he is an expert in making
people fair,” says Das, whose support to ‘Dark is Beautiful’ has brought
back the issue of skin-colour discrimination into sharp focus. “If I am
told all this, despite most people knowing my stand, I wonder what the
other dark women are subjected to,” says Das. “I think each one of us needs
to be comfortable in our skin, even if the world around us tells us we are
not good enough.”
Fair Enough
HUL’s Paranjpe in the analysts call points out that the issue is not
just about dark people wanting fairer skin; the reverse is true too. “There
have been studies carried out across the world that…show all consumers,
whether fair or less fair or dark, are dissatisfied with their skin colour.
Everyone wants their skin tone either two shades lighter or darker. In our
part of the world, skin lightening is something that people look for.”
For the moment, however, Paranjpe is clear that
“skin-lightening is the dominant trend and it’s likely to be the case in
the foreseeable future”.
Debarshi Behera will agree. The 25-year-old who
works in an MNC in Delhi has been an unabashed user of fairness creams for
the past four years. “Why should I be ashamed of using a fairness cream?
It’s a matter of personal choice and if using a cream enhances my look or
makes me feel good and confident, then why should anybody have an issue,”
he asks.
Behera started using fairness cream when he went to
Bhubaneswar in Odisha to complete his engineering course. And the trigger
for using the cream, no marks for guessing, was girls. “I was finding it
hard to get the attention of the girls in the college because of my
wheatish complexion,” confesses Behera. “Moreover, all my friends were good-looking
and fair. So there was a sort of peer pressure.”
So did the fairness cream help? “I have a
girlfriend, and she is very fair,” he says proudly.
Sujit Kumar, like Behera, is another youngster who
swears by fairness creams. “Fairness cream has increased my face value. It
has not only made me more confident but has also enhanced my looks. I would
also look for a life partner who is fair and not dusky,” says the
26-year-old deputy manager with Axis Bank, who has been using fairness
creams for the past six years.
It’s the likes of Behera and Kumar that marketers
like HUL and Emami will be pinning their hopes on. But if the twitterati
are an indicator of the mood of the urban India, these custodians of
personalcare brands also have reason to worry. Here are a couple of tweets
that may have Paranjpe and company wondering for how long skinlightening
will continue to be the dominant trend:
Shekhar Kapur @shekharkapur Anyone who says fair is
beautiful has forgotten the most stunning beauty 2 ever hit Hindi Films.
Smita Patil
Anand Halve @anandhalve
At first fairness creams took 6 wks. Then 7 days.
Now instant fairness. ‘Instant’?! That’s not cream it’s acrylic emulsion
paint!
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