Iam a Bollywood fan, and have been for several years now. I mean the real Bollywood from Bandra, India (Bandra is to Mumbai what Hollywood is to Los Angeles; most Bollywood actors, directors, producers, and studios are in Bandra).

Some of my favorite Bollywood musicals (well, they’re practically all musicals) are Om Shanti Om and Dhoom II. Not to mention that my boyfriend is from Bandra and you get why I’m smitten with this unique, animated, energetic style of cinema.

Two of my favorite Bollywood movie video clips:

Okay, what does any of that have to do with beauty and cosmetics? One of the most famous actors in Bollywood, Shahrukh Khan, and I mean really, really, really famous, sort of a cross between Brad Pitt, Richard Gere, George Clooney, and Johnny Depp rolled into one, endorses a skin lightening product called Fair and Handsome on television, magazine, and billboard ads throughout India. Not skin lightening to get rid of brown spots but to make skin lighter and whiter. Check out www.fairandhandsome.net/yourface.jsp and you’ll see what I mean.

When I was in India last year one of the ads I saw had Shahrukh Khan telling a lonely, unattached man that the way to get a girl was to use the skin-whitening cream he was pitching. If this lonely man had lighter skin he would get the girl of his dreams. Can you imagine? If you’re “white” enough you’ll find love!

I could hardly believe it. I couldn’t quite tell if it was racist, narrow-minded, debasing, callous, or just plain stupid. Actually, it was all of that and more. It is an obsolete, primitive stereotype about beauty that is not only offensive it is just plain wrong. Skin color has nothing to do with beauty.

As you might suspect the ads sell this product really well.

By the way there is a female version of this product in India called Fair and Lovely. Attaining whiter skin works for women too in the same creepy, alarming manner. Just look at the matrimonial ads (they don’t have dating sites, instead they have getting married web sites in India). Everyone wants a fair bride or groom.

Here’s the sad part: there is absolutely nothing in the Fair and Handsome product that can change skin color even a tinge. It doesn’t use natural sun protection as claimed and it is at best an SPF 2. The product is mostly water, thickener, licorice extract (a good anti-irritant with minimal skin lightening properties) and fragrance. Everything else comes after the fragrance that means it is barely present, less then 0.1% of the product. The amount of peptide (which has no hope of changing the color in one skin cell) is miniscule, a dusting that isn’t detectable. Overall this is just an okay moisturizer with a preservative system (Kathon CG) that isn’t recommended for use in leave-on products.

If you’re curious, the ingredients for Fair and Handsome are: Water, cetearyl alcohol, glycyrrhiza glabra, PEG-400, Stearic acid, parfum, vetiveria zizanioides, ethylhexyl methoxycinnamate, tapioca starch, cyclopentasiloxane, niacinamide, rosa damascene, dimethicone, ET 58 (acrylamide/ sodium acrylate copolymer, mineral oil, trideceth 6), peptide – TA 5, peptide immax A, phytic acid, titanium dioxide, zinc oxide, CM 1000 (cyclomethicone dimethicone crosspolymer), seppigel (polacrylamide, isoparaffin, laureth-7), aloe barbadensis, menthe avensis, garcinia indica, vitis vinifera, potassium hydroxide, polyethylene glycol, mthylene bis-benzotriazolyl, tetramethylbutylphenol, methyl paraben, triticum aestivum, disodium EDTA, Propylparaben, kathon CG (methylchloroisothiazolinone, methyisothiazolinone, magnesium chloride, magnesium nitrate).

By the way, my boyfriend’s swarthy, rich brown skin is just beautiful and I wouldn’t want it any other way.