Abstract The skin-lightening products for men in India and their mode of advertising have been shaping the concept of attractiveness for Indian men by portraying lighter skin tone as the most fundamental quality of being attractive, always desirable, and successful. Although women’s skin-lightening products in India have received attention by a few scholars lately, men’s products are still underresearched. Hence, this study aims to investigate the issue of colorism augmented by television commercials for men’s “fairness” (light skin tone) products in India. The primary data for this study are six Hindi television commercials for men’s skin-lightening products which were broadcast from 2005 to 2015 and were available on YouTube during data collection. The commercials are by one popular brand, Emami Fair and Handsome. The target commercials are significant for their categorical distinction in directness as well as for their nature of storytelling that helps facilitate the discourse of colorism itself. The methodology is a combination of multimodal analysis, critical discourse analysis, and advertisement analysis. The overall goal of this study is to bring visibility to this subtle and multilayered problem of colorism in Indian society which is being reinforced by the skin-lightening products for men.

中文翻译：

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印度“公平”的阴影更深：广告中的男性吸引力和色彩偏向

摘要印度男性专用的美白产品及其广告方式通过将较浅的肤色描述为具有吸引力，始终令人向往和成功的最基本特征，已经塑造了印度男性的吸引力概念。尽管最近印度的女性亮肤产品受到了一些学者的关注，但男性产品仍处于研究不足的状态。因此，本研究旨在调查电视广告对印度男性“公平”（浅肤色）产品增强的色彩歧视问题。这项研究的主要数据是从2005年至2015年播出的六个用于男性增白产品的印地语电视广告，可在数据收集期间在YouTube上获取。该广告是由一个受欢迎的品牌Emami Fair and handsome制作的。目标商业广告在直接性上的绝对区别以及讲故事的性质（有助于促进色彩主义本身的话语）具有重要意义。该方法是多模式分析，批判性话语分析和广告分析的组合。这项研究的总体目标是使印度社会这个色彩问题的微妙和多层次的问题得到人们的关注，该问题已被男性美白产品所强化。