The world’s largest personal care brand, L’Oreal will discontinue the use of words like ‘fair’, ‘white’ and ‘light’ in its skincare products as such brands have been put under the scanner for encouraging white supremacy and racial biases.
The announcement was made by its spokesperson on Friday. “The L’Oreal Group acknowledges the legitimate concerns about the terms used to describe skin even-ing products, and has therefore decided to remove the words white/whitening, fair/fairness, light/lightening from all its skin even-ing products,” the company said in a statement.
On Thursday, Unilever, another major player in the same segment, had informed its decision to drop the term ‘fair’ from its popular skin whitening product “Fair & Lovely”. Earlier Johnson & Johnson had declared that it will stop the sale of its whitening creams sold in its Asian and Middle Eastern markets under the brands Clean & Clear and Neutrogena.
These major brands have a large customer base in African, Asian and Caribbean markets where fair skin is considered to be desirable.
The protests were triggered by the death of George Floyd in police custody in May that was an indication of the racial biases and inequalities meted out to the minorities of the world.
L’Oreal has major brands like Garnier, L’Oreal Paris, Nyx Professional Makeup and Maybelline New York under its umbrella.
