Whether it is his choice of cinema or the cause he chooses to support, Abhay Deol has always stood out. This time, it was his candid statements on Facebook. The actor minced no words to show us how racist we are as a country, by pointing out the advertisements that propagate fairness creams and that too, endorsed by top stars in Bollywood.
Sparing no one, Abhay began with the ad featuring John Abraham, where the actor is seen holding a card with shades from fair to dark. “Hey! You can see the promise of darker skin too, if you read the card from left to right! He’s not telling you to go from right to left! Duh!” he wrote. Continuing in his sarcastic best, he slammed fairness cream ads featuring Ileana D’Cruz, Vidya Balan, Shahid Kapoor, Deepika Padukone, Sidharth Malhotra and Sonam Kapoor among others.
Picking on the ad featuring Shah Rukh Khan, Abhay wrote, “And the King Khan himself asking you — being a man, why are you using a women’s fairness cream? He’s clearly trying to make you a man, becoming whiter in the process is just a side effect.”
“There’s a lot more of these campaigns that are blatantly, and sometimes subtly, selling the idea that white skin is better than darker ones. No one at the top of their game in any field is going to tell you that it is demeaning, false, and racist,” says Abhay, adding, “You have to see that for yourself. You have to stop buying into the idea that a particular shade is better than others.”
