The Beauties and The Brains
A few weeks back I watched a fairness cream advertisement claiming to give ‘high-definition’ fairness to its consumers. I was fairly amused to realise that all the performing actors in it were already naturally fair-skinned. I found the humour in it when I checked the meaning of ‘High-Definition', to understand its correlation to a fairness cream! Cambridge Dictionary explains ‘High Definition’ as - ‘a system for showing very clear pictures on a television or computer screen or for producing very clear sound’. Applying this meaning to the fairness cream advertisement, the product was implied to chisel out human facial features to enhance their looks and improve the vocal tones to make someone sound soothing. In addition, the advertisement’s narrative had once again quite simply underlined what it otherwise would deny - even now a woman’s beauty overshadows her brains and that her capabilities are judged and measured by her skin colour. While looking for some more context on the ad...