Way back in 2001, my family moved (temporarily) from India to the US. The first few weeks were, as you would expect, an exercise in “compare and contrast”. One surprising similarity was in advertisements for beauty products.
Colorism and Ageism
In India, I was used to seeing ads of Fair and Lovely*, such as the one below, multiple times a day, on billboards and in TV commercials.
*To my non-Indian friends, ‘Fair and Lovely’ is a successful face cream that makes one’s complexion temporarily lighter. Its ads have a not-so-thinly-veiled implication that being 'lovely’ goes hand in hand with having a lighter complexion. Sadly, the product continues to be successful today. Hindustan Unilever, the company that makes this product, committed earlier in 2020 to rename the product to ‘Glow and Lovely’.
Yet, I found in the US several ads for anti-aging cremes. It seemed eerily similar and equally ridiculous. Where one country stigmatized darker skin, the other stigmatized aging.
However, there is one striking difference. Societally, we condemn any discrimination based on the color of one’s skin, but we quietly accept that “actually yeah, younger is better”. This ageism does not stop at looks.
“Out with the old! In with the new!”
We view youth more favorably in many aspects of our lives. In the job market, sports, entertainment… [insert your field]… the labels we attach to younger people are much kinder than those we attach to elder ones:
Ageism does not stop at just people either:
Companies: We glorify younger and unproven companies and view with contempt older and proven ones.
News: A politician’s latest tweets evoke a more powerful conversation than systemic problems.
Ideas / govt. policy: We firmly believe that the current economic crisis is unprecedented and that history has little to teach us.
This disdain for all things ‘old’ creates a culture in which wisdom compounds at a lower rate, and thus, progress is slower. In our culture, “adult supervision” is met more with sighs of frustration than sighs of relief. “Move fast and break things” has become our anthem while “measure twice and cut once” has become dogma.
History and experience are as important to creating a better tomorrow as are freshness and speed. Progress needs steering, brakes, and mirrors too - not just the gas pedal.