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L'Oréal, Unilever and other beauty giants are changing their marketing strategy to remove racially sensitive branding and products that promote skin lightening.

Beauty brands are facing growing pressure to address the racism built into their products targeted at consumers who live outside the US, particularly those that boast of skin lightening and whitening properties.

Global conglomerates including Unilever, L'Oréal and Johnson & Johnson have begun renaming or removing such products that uphold white skin as desirable. But applying Western expectations onto audiences in Asia, where skin-lightening products are sold, is fraught. Many consumers don't support the removal of these products, even if the intent is to stop promoting light skin as the beauty ideal, says Sofya Bakhta, marketing strategy analyst at Daxue Consulting, a market research firm in Shanghai.

In Asia, consumers see fair skin as a beauty ideal, and Chinese slang like 白富美 ( bai fu mei), which directly translates to "white-rich-beautiful", is still commonly used in the country to describe a woman who is "perfect", says Ashley Yang, a 26-year-old from Kunming. She adds that 黑丑穷 ( hei chou qiong), which translates as "black-ugly-poor", has been used to describe something undesirable.

"Asian consumers have their own beauty ideals, and, perhaps, they are not yet ready to abandon the standards that have been formed for decades," says Bakhta.

Such standards have led beauty companies in Asia to market products that are insensitive to Black people and dark-skinned consumers, says Jason Petrulis, assistant professor of global history at the Education University of Hong Kong. Today, there are over 25,600 skin-whitening products sold by Alibaba. "For years, executives have known they are putting racist products into millions of Asian households, and they have been OK with that."

Eliminating, or renaming, lightening products

The recent attention to the space follows weeks of anti-racism protests in response to the killings of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and Ahmaud Arbery and the resulting reckoning of the racist practices embedded in many companies.

Johnson & Johnson, which sells skin-lightening products in Asia and the Middle East like Neutrogena's "Fine Fairness" and Clean & Clear's "Clear Fairness", has said it will stop selling those products and others that are marketed as dark-spot reducers but have been purchased by some consumers to lighten skin tone.

Other companies will keep selling such products, but with different branding, meaning the products will still be available to use but not promoted in support of light skin as the ideal. Unilever is renaming the skin-whitening cream Fair & Lovely, sold in Southern Asian countries like India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Malaysia, Thailand and Singapore, to Glow & Lovely, with the men's version to be renamed Glow & Handsome.

The terms "whitening" and "lightening" will also be removed from packaging and marketing materials. Unilever's Fair & Lovely made up around 27 per cent of Unilever's total skincare sales in Asia Pacific in 2019, according to Euromonitor. The changes are part of a company shift to be more inclusive by introducing "strict marketing principles that [do not] make any association between skin tone and a person's achievement, potential or worth", a spokesperson told Vogue Business.

L'Oréal has also announced it will remove skin-whitening references from its products. During the French cosmetics giant's annual general meeting on 30 June, chief executive Jean-Paul Agon acknowledged that the products were "intended to protect the skin against UV rays [and] signs of skin ageing", he said. "In Asia, these products have been called 'whiteners' or 'fairness', but these names are increasingly challenged by our local consumers, and therefore we decided to adapt the wording to adapt to the change in mindset." Asia Pacific accounted for 32.3 per cent of L'Oréal's business in 2019, according to Daxue Consulting.

Companies outside of the US like Japan's Shiseido and South Korea's Amorepacific, which have devoted a considerable part of their businesses to marketing creams and lotions that promise to lighten skin tone, have not announced plans to pull or rename their whitening products. Both companies declined to comment for this story.

"Advertising more inclusive beauty products and selling whitening creams are two sides of the same coin. A new name on a box will not liberate women and men from social norms," says Dr. Elizabeth LaCouture, programme director and assistant professor of gender studies at The University of Hong Kong.

Grappling with cultural norms

While Western consumers have lauded the shift, it's a different story in Asia. An online poll conducted by the Chinese state-owned media company Phoenix Weekly found that only 9 per cent of 6,400-plus respondents supported companies becoming more racially sensitive, while over half said the move to remove references to lighter skin tones was "ridiculous". Users on the Chinese social network Weibo questioned whether beauty companies might be overreacting.

Asian beauty standards have long put whiteness at a premium, and these aesthetics run deeper than skin colour, with the popularity of plastic surgery procedures in Asia designed to make facial features more Caucasian.

Asian consumers have their own beauty ideals, and, perhaps, they are not yet ready to abandon the standards that have been formed for decades"

Nearly 6,300 tonnes of skin-whitening products were sold worldwide last year, according to Euromonitor, including products marketed as anti-ageing creams targeting dark spots or freckles. India carries the highest percentage of whitening skincare products, with almost 80 per cent of basic moisturisers sold in India holding skin-whitening properties. These products also prove popular in Southeast Asian markets, such as Vietnam, Indonesia, Thailand and the Philippines, where skin-whitening moisturisers make up over 50 per cent of the market. Meanwhile, in China, 30 per cent of all basic moisturisers sold have skin-whitening properties.

"We have a global beauty industry that thrives on insecurity and the allure of achievable 'enhancement' built upon ideals that privilege white skin," says Maggie Tan, 25, from Guangzhou, who spends almost £300 on beauty every month. "I've bought dark spot reducers and brightening masks because I felt insecure about the freckles on my face."

"People in Asia don't really perceive 'whitening' products as racist because Asian people have always pursued 'fair' skin for beauty and social status. My mum and her friends buy whitening products, and they will continue to," says Yang.

Modern brands reflect new mindsets

As more Western brands like Fenty, Coty and NYX enter the Chinese market in recent years, the concept of "inclusive makeup" and alternative forms of beauty are becoming more welcomed by local consumers, says Elisa Harca, Asia CEO of Red Ant, a digital marketing agency in Shanghai that follows developments in youth culture, trends and movements. "Consumers are increasingly in the pursuit of individualism, personality and authentic style."

"Chinese consumers are not afraid to experiment, and they quickly respond to trends, which makes me believe that inclusive beauty can become [widely accepted] in China as well," agrees Daxue Consulting's Bakhta.

With brand empathy playing a bigger role in purchasing decisions, brand loyalty is changing, and more consumers are searching for morally aligned companies that stand for what they believe in, says Gabriella Beckwith, senior research analyst at Euromonitor.

"In light of Covid-19 and the Black Lives Matter movement, there has been a call for companies to put greater emphasis on people over profit," she explains. "If brands continue to sell products marketed as 'whitening' and 'fair', despite continued demand from Asian and African consumers, a damaged global reputation in times of scrutiny could cost more than lost opportunity in these regions."

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Beauty ideals were built on racist stereotypes. What now?

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L'Oréal, Unilever and other beauty giants are changing their marketing strategy to remove racially sensitive branding and products that promote skin lightening. Beauty brands are facing growing pressure to address the racism built into their products targeted at consumers who live outside the US, particularly those that boast of skin lightening and whitening properties.

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If you ain't been in my skin, you ain't never gonna understand my character.

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How can we expect the marketing industry to not solely prioritize profits?

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How can we expect the marketing industry to not solely prioritize profits?

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"Beauty has undergone a similar process, thanks to advertisers. Evolution gave us a circuit that responds to good looks - call it the pleasure receptor for our visual cortex - and in our natural environment, it was useful to have. But take a person with one-in-a-million skin and bone structure, add professional makeup and retouching, and you're no longer looking at beauty in its natural form. You've got pharmaceutical-grade beauty, the cocaine of good looks."