The Inspiring Movement That Has Women of Color Opening Up About Unfair Beauty Standards

Say hello to the product that’s apparently been the bane of many a South Asian woman’s existence for decades: Fair & Lovely, a vitamin B-3 skin-lightening cream that claims to have “provided hope” to women around the world “for how it made them feel about themselves and for how it made the world see them.”

Now meet the women who are fiercely challenging that racist message: dark-skinned South Asians and other women of color who are “flexing their melanin,” as Colorlines so aptly put it, by posting proud pics with the trending hashtag #UnfairAndLovely.

“I tried many skin-lightening creams and bleaches just to make myself look and feel prettier,” noted one woman, Divya, on Instagram. “But with the help of this movement, I’m starting to love my skin color and the beautiful culture and history behind it.”

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It all started sometime last month, when Pax Jones, a University of Texas student, created a photo series aimed at fighting back against the global obsession with fair skin. She called it “Unfair and Lovely” — a double-meaning twist on the name of the 40-year-old skin-lightening cream — and featured beautiful images of her classmates, South Asian sisters Mirusha and Yanusha Yogarajah (above). The series inspired the hashtag movement on Twitter and Instagram, joining forces with yet another empowering hashtag #ReclaimTheBindi, which is pushing back against cultural appropriation. And it’s declared the week of Mar. 8 to 14 as #UnfairAndLovelyWeek.

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Women around the world are enthusiastically taking part.

“India is a country obsessed with fair skin,” noted a PRI story on the hashtag trend. “From a young age, girls are told to stay out of the sun, taught how to use facemasks with lightening properties and instructed to avoid drinking tea because ‘it makes your skin darker.’

But the hashtag campaign is for just about anyone who feels at home in it. “#UnfairAndLovely is for dark-skinned people of color. #UnfairAndLovely is meant to be an inclusive space,” Jones told the Huffington Post. “It is for the dark-skinned queer, trans, genderqueer, non-binary, poor, fat, differently abled people of color.”