Topic summary
Skin tone
Extracted from the Wikipedia article Human skin color.
Skin whitening
In South Asia, society regards fair skin as more attractive and associates dark skin with lower class status. This results in a massive market for skin-whitening creams. Fairer skin-tones also correlate to higher caste-status in the Hindu social order – although the system is not based on skin tone. Actors and actresses in Indian cinema tend to have light skin tones, and Indian cinematographers have used graphics and intense lighting to achieve more "desirable" skin tones. Fair skin tones are advertised as an asset in Indian marketing.