Hindustan Unilever, on Thursday, said that it will drop the word "fair" from its skin-lightening cream Fair & Lovely. The move comes in the wake of increased backlash on social media after Black Lives Matter Movement. The skin cream has been long criticised for promoting negative stereotypes against people with darker skin tone.
"We are making our skincare portfolio more inclusive ... a more diverse portrayal of beauty," Hindustan Unilever Chairman Sanjiv Mehta said in a statement.
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," Sunny Jain, Unilever's president of its beauty and personal care division, said in another statement.
While the new name for the cream awaits regulatory approvals, check out how Twitter is reacting to this news:
Bollywood actress Kangana Ranaut lauded the move. Taking to the Twitter handle, the team of the actress wrote, "It has been a long and sometimes a very lonely battle but results only happen when whole nation participates in the movement".
However, netizens are unhappy that the company will continue selling the skin-lightening cream but under a different name. "So... @unilever is still going to sell skin-lightening cream in South Asia and will just call it "Lovely" from now on?," wrote one.
