The Cult of the Crab

Some places go to the dogs. My state, on the other hand, is going to the crabs. The 62 million people of this state would like nothing better than to gloriously suffer from skin cancer (melanoma). I was at a supermarket a while back when I snapped this:

What is wrong with us? Didn’t we all learn in our Biology classes in school that melanin is a good thing? That it protects us from harmful UV rays? People! We are brown skinned for a reason. We live in a tropical country. How do rational people pay attention to those obnoxious ads that promote “fairness creams”? Those ads actually seem to imply that being fair leads to more confidence and thus career growth.

Let me be absolutely clear here. I refuse to blame Proctor and Gamble and Unilever for this. In a free market economy, companies sell things for which there is a demand. So if we all suffer from skin cancer and die horrible deaths, there is only one thing to blame. Our own stupid skin-colour fetish.

Here are some nice posts on this:

http://indsight.org/blog/archives/2005/07/02/all-is-fair-in-the-f-airness-game/

Apparently, this is not just a problem in India.

http://arabist.net/archives/2006/08/05/the-cost-of-wanting-to-be-white/

PS: In case you didn’t get the “Crab” reference, the Latin word for Crab is “Cancer”

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