Beauty is many things. It’s biological. It’s natural. It’s cultural. It’s personal. It's fun. But it is also political. Václav Havel, the last president of Czechoslovakia, wrote concerning politics, “I have discovered that good taste is more useful here than a postgraduate degree in political science.” Good taste is often viewed as someone’s ability to recognize worthy aesthetic (or beautiful) objects, ideas, or events. Havel goes on to explain that good form—how to present ideas, how to create a friendly environment, and so on—is crucial to leading people. Despite Havel’s optimism, which may be warranted, others in leadership have exploited our natural tendencies for beauty (or repulsions from ugliness) to steer citizens toward less positive (and even nefarious) ends. Leaders hoping to turn one group against another will describe the other as disgusting or in similar terms. The goal is not to engage reason but to provoke a visceral reaction. Beauty also shows up in the political realm from within a culture. Colorism illustrates the politics of beauty and how beauty standards influence our opinions about people’s worthiness for careers, marriage, and other endeavors.

The Harvard Kennedy School website offers this succinct definition: “Colorism is the differential treatment of same-race individuals based on skin color.” While racism occurs between people of different racial identities, colorism is the discrimination against people with darker skin tones from within or outside of their racial identities. To explain it in the reverse, colorism is showing favoritism to those with lighter skin tones. One question to think about concerns the role that politics, policies, and industries played, and still play, in continuing the expansion and perpetuation of colorism. Colonization, mostly by light-skinned people, around the world may not have invented colorism, but it cemented the attitude. And then, slavery further embedded colorism into the fabric of society, even after slaves were freed. In 2006, Audrey Elisa Kerr wrote about the paper bag test—someone is accepted if their skin is lighter than a brown paper bag—in her book The Paper Bag Principle. This “principle” was used for acceptance into social clubs, restaurants, churches, and employment. The New York Times writer Brent Staples looked through archived 1940’s newspapers from his hometown in Pennsylvania and discovered job ads that listed “light colored” as a requirement for consideration.

Scholars show that colorism is pervasive in the beauty industry and adjacent iterations of beauty filters on social media sites like Instagram, Snapchat, and more. Sociologist Margaret Hunter explains that virtually all of the “beauty” filters on these sites are designed to make people look more like white people by narrowing the nose and lightening the skin. In The Routledge Companion to Beauty Politics, edited by Maxine Leeds Craig, scholars discuss facets of colorism in different countries, including Japan, Sudan, and India, which shows just how pervasive it is throughout the world. Colorism affects attitudes and our treatment of people for jobs and marriage, but it also infiltrates consumer culture.

Skin-whitening creams, for instance, dominate many of these countries' beauty product industries. Their connection to colorism probably cannot be overstated. Lighter skin hearkens back to the days of the aristocracy where tanned skin demonstrated one’s social class as a laborer; those with lighter skin were deemed more important because they didn’t have to labor in the sun thereby getting a tan. Justification for these creams continues to be couched in terms of need; there’s a “need” for these creams, so we meet that need. Some products may have originally developed to meet a need, but that doesn’t prevent them from enabling colorist narratives and exploiting people’s insecurities. Most notably, the problems arise in their marketing campaigns that imply lighter skin will make you happier, more successful, and better eligible for marriage. If there’s no reason to use a product, then people won’t do it. Marketing must either raise awareness about a product or induce that necessity into their audience. While this probably oversimplifies marketing a bit, the main point is that some people need to be convinced they need a product. And the promise of a better life with lighter skin is the message.

Overcoming colorism seems difficult, but there are groups attempting to turn oppressive beauty standards around by promoting a different notion of beauty. Some groups advocate for different notions of beauty in general, such as Beauty Without Borders, but Dark Is Beautiful (DISB) began in India to specifically combat the problem of colorism. Founded in 2009, Dark Is Beautiful tries to expose the bias by raising awareness; for example, they collected 30,000 signatures to stop an Emami Group ad campaign for Fair & Lovely (or Fair & Handsome) skin-lightening cream, which changed the name to Glow & Lovely in 2020. They also support those who’ve been victims of colorism by helping them unite with others to advocate for change. Many people used to deal with these issues in isolation, but DISB brings them together. While many people feel they have been victims of colorism, DISB acknowledges that these same people have sometimes been guilty of subconscious colorism, which is all the more reason to expose it and talk about it. We might act in ways we can’t see, until we understand colorism and how it plays out in our lives.

Companies involved in beauty culture engage regularly in political contexts whether they want to or not. Making a skin-whitening cream can reasonably be construed as a political act. As consumers become more aware and socially conscientious and engaged, companies cannot plead ignorance. Nor can they give superficial answers to address their role in furthering colorism. Companies must take a stand on issues that directly relate to their work, and I suspect this is easier to do when a company is beginning. Issues like colorism that envelope the beauty industry cannot be ignored.

Fyodor Dostoevsky once proclaimed, “Beauty will save the world.” Maybe, it’s fitting that this statement appears in his book called The Idiot. Are we naive to believe that beauty, which has been exploited to incredible degrees, could actually turn the tide and help usher in an age of equity? I might be that naive, but I also know  it won’t happen magically without a concerted effort across the denizens of people in various spots in the industry, political realm, academia, and so on. The first step seems to be acknowledging it and talking about it.