Papa Don't Bleach

Fairness cream companies say their consumer base cuts across all divides. While fairness is "about self-image" among upper-middle class urban men, for their lower-class counterparts, they claim, it is about aspirations, upward mobility and an improved social stature.

And the cash machines sure are ringing all around. Emami's Fair & Handsome already sells out of 5 lakh outlets nationwide. The company expects it to grow from a Rs 50-crore brand at present to a Rs 150-crore brand over the next five years. And in the one year since HUL launched Fair & Lovely Menz Active, it claims to have captured 1.6 per cent of national marketshare.

"By presenting fairness less as a value and more as a technology, it becomes easier to make it available to men and women," says Visvanathan. "After all, technology is supposed to be neutral." But with all their claims about "breakthrough" skin-whitening technology, do these creams work only by reinforcing age-old stereotypes?

"Of course they do," says Mudit. "This srk ad is going to feed upon the insecurities of young people who haven't discovered that skin colour is a non-issue." Skincare companies are too busy counting their moolah to care. Agarwal puts it bluntly: "We are strictly here in a commercial business situation and are not here to set social standards."

Besides, not all of this passion for paleness is a latent cultural aspiration waiting to be exploited. Some of it is the outcome of a 'metrosexual movement' of sorts, a new male order, so to speak, where grooming is booming. Mudit sees nothing wrong in getting himself a regular manicure, pedicure and facial clean-up. "Earlier, we thought it feminine or gay to worry about your skin or your hair, but now, even my dad lets my mom apply a face pack for him," says Chetan Dujodia (name changed), who runs a prosperous family business in Mumbai.

According to a recent Gillette survey, Indian men spend a daily average of 20 minutes primping in front of a mirror; women spend only 18 minutes. And while neighbourhood chemists report that women's fairness creams still retail five or six times more than men's fairness products, they do agree that the market is picking up fast.

Sudarshan Singh, brand manager of Nivea for Men, puts it categorically: "The Neanderthal look is out." If today's machismo is about looking and smelling good, so be it. It can be safely assumed that Indian women won't miss the BO, the bushy armpits and the paratha-paunch of the traditional Indian man. Neither will skincare companies, for whom business prospects have never looked, well, fairer.