Thread. Unilever evolves skin care portfolio to embrace a more inclusive vision of beauty, ending references to ‘whitening’, ‘lightening’ or ‘fairness’. https://www.unilever.com/news/press-releases/2020/unilever-evolves-skin-care-portfolio-to-embrace-a-more-inclusive-vision-of-beauty.html
Sunny Jain, President Beauty & Personal Care, explains, “We recognise that the use of the words

'fair’, ‘white’ and ‘light’ suggest a singular ideal of beauty that we don’t think is right, and we want to address this.”
A welcome and long overdue step, but am sceptical, Unilever, amongst others, have faced a huge backlash and been the subject of sustained campaigns for

perpetuating colourism including by the brilliant @disbcampaign for a very long time. Their advertising has consistently played on associating skin colour with one's worth/desirability/success/marriageability which cannot be explained away with "We are aware that

historic advertising available on the internet; these ads are not aligned with the current values of the brand." We need more accountability. Long before the establishment of Hindustani Lever, Unilever (as Lever Brothers) has a long, history of capitalising on the colonial

darker skins and Brahmanical privileging of caste (often connected to colour) and commodifying idealised notions of Eurocentric beauty ideals. These processes need unpacking and dismantling. More recently, initiatives like the Fair and Lovely Foundation have served

to whitewash (pun intended) the harm enabled by its perpetuation of colourism. The effects of decades of market messaging, for ***-load of bucks, cannot be undone with quick re-brand and claims of "we know better now". Unilever is certainly not the only company implicated in

racialised marketing and capitalism but one of the most powerful multinational corporations with an immense reach. Hopefully this is a step in the right direction, but we shall see @HUL_News #skin-lightening #racialcapital #FairandLovely