All is war in fair

(I apologize for the weak title. The subject, as you will learn
shortly, lends itself to many puns. I just can't think of the best one
yet.)

After years of carving a niche for itself, "Fair and Lovely" found
itself in a Political Correctness controversy in India. The criticism
touched on body-image consciousness and associating negatives with
skin color etc. I was startled. As someone who was was born into a
culture where a fairer skin color was automatically associated with
being pretty, it never even occurred to me to question that. And of
course the "shut your mouth" argument to counter these protesters was
"If White people can get tans to make themselves more appealing, why
can't Indians try to become fairer? What's good for one direction (of
changing skin color) is good for the other."

Anyway, all this is atleast a few years old. Now I'm in India and
watching TV and guess what I notice. Instead of fewer ads for
"fairness" creams, there are more. There a lot more products that now
advertise the glory of fairer skin. "Fairness And now they're even
advertising creams for men! It's wonderful. It just goes to show that
you can protest about Political Correctness all you want, but people
won't stop buying something just because you think it's offensive. The
free market will decide what people want and what they don't want. And
apparently what they want in India is fairer skin.