Yes I know, traditionally it has been tall, dark and handsome, but with the changing times, the phrase has changed too. No, I am not talking about women's take on men (it is something that no mortal has ever understood and I am highly optimistic about the future too). Here it is about how men want to see themselves. And a plethora of advertisements of fairness creams for men just corroborates the aforesaid title.

Hindustan Unilever (HUL) was the trendsetter. Banking on the fact that more than women, it were men who used their product (Fair and Lovely), they came up with the product specially "designed" for the "roughness and toughness" of male skin. And as the profits accrued, other brands soon followed the trend.Nowadays from Shahrukh Khan to John Abraham to Shahid Kapoor, everyone seems to be busy substantiating the consumers how using their brand of cream would make the skin fairer by "x" tones (x being a variable, depending on ad to ad). And needless to say, people are falling for it. Notwithstanding the fact that usage of these creams have their own side effect (ranging from skin rashness and pimples in short term to cancer and kidney problem etc in the long term), the sales are ever increasing.

But here I am not to write about the ill effects of these creams. But something that we might not have noticed hitherto. Are we promoting racism in the form of these commercials. As if fairer skin is superior to the dark one. By shooting these commercials on television, we are further promoting the fact that "fair" is "fair". Seriously, have any of us ever seen an ad which promotes a cream which "darkens the skin up to two tones"? No, we haven't. Because there is no such cream at all. Shouldn't these commercials be banned? Enough of complaints on "reality shows".Has some intellectual gone to the courts complaining about them?

Why do we complain of Australians being "racist" when we know that somewhere, deep inside,we too are no different. Agreed that we haven't deployed aggression unlike others, still discrimination in any form is condemnable. And it should be condemned. Is anyone listening?