Actor Abhay Deol roasted fellow Bollywood actors on Facebook on Wednesday for endorsing fairness creams and called their ad campaigns “demeaning, false, and racist”.In a series of sardonic Facebook posts, Deol aimed at Shah Rukh Khan, Deepika Padukone, Vidya Balan, Shahid Kapoor and others, while sharing the various ads they have done for fairness products, and mocked their promises of a fair skin.
His posts received overwhelming response, with likes running into thousands on each post by early evening. Deol’s anti-fairness cream tirade comes merely two weeks after attacks on individuals from African countries in Delhi-NCR, which had reignited the debate on racism in the country. In a post featuring Shah Rukh’s ad, Abhay Deol translates the tagline and writes: “(Translated) – ‘Being a man why are you are still using a women’s FAIRNESS cream!?’ He’s clearly trying to make you a man, becoming whiter is just a side effect.”
Deol posted another ad that showed actor and producer John Abraham holding a skin colour shade card in his hand. Here, Deol writes: “WE ARE NOT A RACIST COUNTRY! I will prove it to you. In the pic below, John holds a card with shades from white 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! Even if the writing on the tube reads ‘Intensive FAIRNESS moisturiser’.
It just means its ‘FAIR’ to all who use it.” After few more posts, the actor condemned the idea of campaigns that portray white skin as superior. “There’s a lot more of these campaigns that are blatantly, and sometimes subtly, selling you the idea that whiter skin is better than darker skin. No one at the top of their game in any field is going to tell you that it is demeaning, false, and racist,” Deol wrote. “Respect Mr Abhay Deol. Deepika Padukone, you are doing a great job by spreading awareness on depression and how to tackle it, but this ad is a big thumbs down,” wrote one Saarika on a post with a fairness cream ad featuring Padukone.
