‘Fair & Lovely’ cream to be rebranded as ‘Glow & Lovely’, announces Hindustan Unilever
The skin cream for men will be called ‘Glow & Handsome’.
Hindustan Unilever, the Indian arm of global consumer products giant Unilever, said on Thursday that it has decided to rename its popular skincare brand “Fair & Lovely” to “Glow & Lovely”, Reuters reported. The company added that the skin cream for men will be renamed to “Glow & Handsome”.
Hindustan Unilever had first announced its intention to rebrand its “Fair & Lovely” cream on June 25. The company has been widely criticised for using racist imagery and promoting negative stereotypes related to darker skin tones.
The company claimed that it had moved away from promoting “benefits of fairness, whitening and skin lightening, towards glow, even tone, skin clarity and radiance” in 2019 itself. It said that the brand is committed to “celebrating all skin tones”, and has promoted women’s empowerment over the last decade.
Earlier in June, United States-based multinational corporation Johnson & Johnson had announced that it would stop the sale of certain skin lightening creams. On June 26, L’Oreal, the world’s biggest cosmetic products company, announced that it will remove the words “white”, “fair” and “light” from its skin products.
The decisions of these companies are seen as a response to the anti-racism demonstrations that have been held across the United States since the death of George Floyd, an African American man who was killed when a white police officer knelt on his neck for almost nine minutes.