Bollywood actor Shahrukh Khan stars in a Fair & Handsome advert.

A YouTuber shows how to apply skin-lightening cream "Fair & Lovely Max Fairness".

If Indians were 'White', would there be a 'Dark and Sexy'? Here are some brands to stoke our inferiority complex. pic.twitter.com/dkhGEsYShT — abhay deol (@AbhayDeol) 5 août 2014 The actor Abhay Deol commenting on different skin-lightening products on Twitter.



In Indian supermarket aisles there is an abundance of different skin-lightening products: moisturisers, soaps and cleansers. Now skincare brands are moving away from the saturated market of products aimed at women, and are directly targeting a male customer base. In their adverts, white, or whiter, skin is associated with sucess – in one's professional as well as romantic life.There has already been a backlash against these skin-lightening creams that market whiter skin as a standard of beauty. The organisation Women of Worth started the "Dark is beautiful" campaign in 2009, as a way of promoting darker skin.And for the last few months, the organisation has started to focus its efforts on men, as more and more men start to use these products. The grooming industry for men in India has grown by 40 percent over the last five years, with the skin-lightening product Fair & Handsome the best-selling product.Several famous Bollywood actors, such as Abhay Deol or Harshvardhan Rane, are using their celebrity status to speak out on social media against this beauty trend. They criticise other actors , like Shahrukh Khan, who earn money from promoting racist adverts.In 2013, Women of Worth launched a petition against an advert by Indian cosmetics brand Emami. In one famous case, a 67-year-old man from Kerala in the south west of India took a cosmetics company, and the actor promoting its skin-lightening products, to court for false advertising. He was awarded damages of 30,000 rupees in January 2016 [equivalent to about 430 euros].