Fair and Lovely is a skin lightening cream produced by Hindustan Unilever and is the number one selling skin lightener in the world. The cream is marketed as a fairness cream and is popular in India, Indonesia, Singapore, Brunei, Thailand, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Mauritius, and other parts of Asia, and is also exported to other parts of the world. The cream has undergone controversy under its previous name "Fair & Lovely" due to its aggressive marketing campaigns in India that promote "fair" as beautiful and "dark" as ugly, leading critics to charge the firm with promoting colorism.
The ingredients of Fair and Lovely cream vary depending on the variant. The Fair & Lovely Advanced Multivitamin Cream contains water, fatty acids, niacinamide, sunscreen, antioxidants, and preservatives. The Fair and Lovely Glow And Lovely Advanced cream contains water, fatty acids, niacinamide, sunscreen, antioxidants, and preservatives. The Fair & Lovely Multi-Vitamin Fairness Cream contains vitamins B3, B6, C, and E, along with multivitamins and UVB/UVA sunscreens. The main active lightening ingredient is niacinamide, which is known to inhibit the production and transfer of melanin, which is what causes color in skin.
While the company claims that Fair and Lovely cream is 100% ayurvedic and natural, it contains added preservatives, chemicals, and artificial minerals. Some of the ingredients in the cream, such as tocopheryl acetate and pyridoxine hydrochloride, have been linked to cancer and contact dermatitis. Additionally, the cream contains less than stellar ingredients such as phenoxyethanol, methyl paraben, and propyl paraben, and most worrisome is the final, ambiguous ingredient: perfume.
