Last Friday, on the way to the Mumbai-Kolkata Indian Premier League cricket match, Beth and I had the good fortune of riding the train to Churchgate Station during rush hour. Watch Bombay commuters of every size, shape, and generation leap onto the train, before it stops, to secure a seat for the long ride home:
Archives for May 2008
HLL Fairness Meter: Because Life’s Not Fair
Controversial psychologist Phillipe Rushton developed the head test: ethnicities with smaller heads, he stated, are less intelligent. Apartheid South Africa developed the pencil test: if a pencil placed in a person’s hair stays put, it was thought, the person is racially inferior. Not to be outdone, Hindustan Lever, India’s largest consumer products company, recently developed a “Fairness Meter.”
In a society where a darker complexion indicates lower caste, the Fairness Meter brings a new level of accuracy to the time-honored tradition of judging people by the color of their skin. Part of the Fair & Lovely line of cosmetics, the Fairness Meter helps Indian men and women to accurately track the bleaching effect of Fair & Lovely’s skin-whitening cream. The lower the number – the logic goes – their fairer the person and thus the more beautiful. Says the mother of Apoorva Satish, an early adopter of the Fairness Meter: “My daughter Apoorva Satish studying in 10th Standard was some dark chap. After seeing the advertise of Fair & Lovely I encouraged her to use this multivitamin cream. The result is 15 number to 10 number according to fairness meter. We are all very happy…”
Read more testimonials on Fair & Lovely’s website.