John Abraham and Bipasha Basu were the most talked about couples in Bollywood, during the early 2000s. The duo came from similar backgrounds of modelling and had absolutely no connections with the Hindi film industry. They finally met each other for the first time in 2003, on the sets of their film, Jism, which sizzled the fire of their relationship.
Being top of the league actors as well as popular models, it required both John and Bipasha to be a part of many commercial ad campaigns. However, there was once a time when the dashing hunk, John had to promote a particular fairness cream. In an old interview, John had once said that he felt guilty for doing such an ad.
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In the video, which featured an interview with Komal Nahata, John was asked about promoting a fairness cream for men, despite dating a dusky girl, Bipasha. To this John mentioned that he felt a bit responsible and guilty for having to do it. He had said:
“Now, at the end of the day, we’re a fairness cream so we’re a guilty party. But we made sure that we don’t use it as an emotional quotient that if you become fair you’d get a girl.”
Further in the interview, John was quick to set his records straight about associating with such a product. He clarified his stance as an individual as to why he had approached to do the advertisement. In his words:
“See, it is a very valid question. When the term fairness came up, I was a little worried and I spoke to (the fairness cream brand). If you look at the ad, through the ad fairness ka naam nahi liya hai (not used the word). It says fairness that is guaranteed, so I said no, let’s make it results that is guaranteed.”
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Up next, John also highlighted how insufficiently defined is the word fairness across the country and, unfortunately, therefore, how narrow is its colloquial usage. Mentioning how his work with the ad campaign was significantly different from the general understanding of the word, fairness, he had said:
“The other thing is that, in India, you’ll be shocked at this because this is according to a market survey, fairness is a term which is colloquially used for removing blemishes. Removing the dark spots (on your face) is technically fairness. That’s what the term fairness means in India. The idea of this fairness cream was to remove these blemishes to make them two tones lighter, and we specifically maintained it in the ad as well.”
What do you think about John’s perspectives?
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