Shortly after HUL decides to ditch ‘fair’ from Fair and Lovely, Shaadi.com which is one of the leading matrimonial sites announced that it would be removing skin tone filters from its sites.
Matrimonial sections of newspaper and websites are flooded with advertisements looking for ‘well educated’, ‘homely’, and ‘good looking’ life partners. In many ads, we can also see people emphasizing the complexion that the family is looking for. Along with other characteristics being ‘fair’ is something that most families point.
At the present scenario, we can see that brands all over the world are relooking at their brand values mainly in terms of color and racism. Recently one of India’s most favorite products ‘fair and lovely’ dropped the word ‘fair’ from its brand, showing the brand’s journey towards a comprehensive vision of beauty.
Usually, when a user signs into the account of shaadi.com, the customer is given an option to choose the skin tone that they prefer in their partners. Along with factors like gender, age, etc., this was also taken as a factor.
News of this filter first came out when a petition surfaced demanding this site to take off this option couple of weeks ago. The spokesperson of Shaadi.com concerning this matter said that they were not using any type of skin color filter in any of its platforms and that the feature which was currently used in the site was non-functional and rarely used by its customers therefore never came to the attention of the company. He also said that the company does not discriminate its customers based on color and that their customer base was very diverse and pluralistic. They also iterated that it was not stumbled as most customers did not use this feature and that it did not have much impact on its users.
Soon after this feature was pointed out they made sure to remove this non-functional app from their product. As many fights against color discrimination and racism are happening around the world today, we can see this removal of skin tone filter as a support by the company towards these fights and appreciate it.
