Fair and Lovely

Director:

Sabba S Elahi

USA

2019

4'

Notions of nationalized beauty standards haunt and privilege women around the globe, shaping social relations and individual psyches. My video is inspired by popular advertisements in South Asia for the cream "Fari & Lovely," which depicts the character who uses the cream as the one who meets his or her soulmate, gets the job, lands the promotion. The female character in my video layers the cream carefully and obsessively, white-washed, consumed by a desire to transform into a more "desirable skin."

​