Edited by Lester Brathwaite
Your skin that is. After launching a skin-whitening app for Facebook India (is this really what you had in mind between bong hits, Zuckerberg?), Vaseline has come under scrutiny for…well, being assholes. The app is all part of a promotional tool for Vaseline’s skin-lightening creams for men. Keep reading…
It is apparently huge in India, where the fairer the skin, the happier the kin. Ladies have been using these sorts of creams for ages and though this practice smacks of Eurocentric idealism (I might have made that up), is it really any different from the proclivity of pasty Europeans to brave skin cancer and the sight of obese men in speedos all for that perfect tan?
Vaseline is just another in a long line of beauty products to endorse this Michael Jacksoning of the Indian people. The causes of this latest trend probably reach far back into the socioeconomic histories of the subcontinent and their hard-won independence from the British, as well as the undeniable lure of Western culture, whatever. The market is there, for whatever reason. And Vaseline is making sure to profit from it — one vaguely racist, blatantly opportunistic social media tool at a time.