Melanin on the Margins: Advertising and the Cultural Politics of Fair/Light/White Beauty in India

Author:

Parameswaran Radhika1,Cardoza Kavitha2

Affiliation:

1. Radhika Parameswaran is an associate professor in the School of Journalism and adjunct faculty in the cultural studies and India studies programs at Indiana University, Bloomington. Her areas of research include feminist cultural studies, gender and media globalization, South Asia, qualitative methods, and postcolonial studies. Her recent publications have appeared in Journal of Children and Media, The Handbook of Critical Indigenous Methodologies, Communication, Culture, and Critique, Critical Studies...

2. Kavitha Cardoza is a senior reporter at WAMU Public Radio in Washington, DC. Her research interests include South Asia, children and media, and health communication. Her research has been published in Journal of Children and Media and Contemporary South Asia.

Abstract

The recent commercial boom in women's skin-lightening or “fairness” cosmetics in India is part of the larger context of escalating lifestyle consumerism in Asia's emerging market nations. This monograph examines the cultural politics of gender, nation, beauty and skin color in the persuasive narratives of Indian magazine advertisements and television commercials for fairness cosmetics and personal care products. We situate advertising's compact stories of ideal femininity within the sociology of colorism's transnational links to hierarchies of race, gender, caste, ethnicity and class and the rapid economic growth in the skin-lightening cosmetics sector in India over the past decade. Deconstructing advertising's visual and linguistic fields of meaning, our analysis dissects the rhetorical themes of bodily and personal transformation, modern and traditional science, and heterosexual romance that operate together to inflate the currency of light-skinned beauty. In conclusion, we outline recent challenges to the hegemony of colorism in India and suggest directions for future research that can build on this monograph's scrutiny of advertising's regulatory regimes of beauty.

Publisher

SAGE Publications

Subject

Communication

Cited by 73 articles. 订阅此论文施引文献 订阅此论文施引文献,注册后可以免费订阅5篇论文的施引文献,订阅后可以查看论文全部施引文献

同舟云学术

1.学者识别学者识别

2.学术分析学术分析

3.人才评估人才评估

"同舟云学术"是以全球学者为主线,采集、加工和组织学术论文而形成的新型学术文献查询和分析系统,可以对全球学者进行文献检索和人才价值评估。用户可以通过关注某些学科领域的顶尖人物而持续追踪该领域的学科进展和研究前沿。经过近期的数据扩容,当前同舟云学术共收录了国内外主流学术期刊6万余种,收集的期刊论文及会议论文总量共计约1.5亿篇,并以每天添加12000余篇中外论文的速度递增。我们也可以为用户提供个性化、定制化的学者数据。欢迎来电咨询!咨询电话:010-8811{复制后删除}0370

www.globalauthorid.com

TOP

Copyright © 2019-2024 北京同舟云网络信息技术有限公司
京公网安备11010802033243号  京ICP备18003416号-3