I came of age in the era of “Black is Beautiful” and when skin-whitening creams were frowned upon. But in recent years skin bleaching has come back with a vengeance. Nowadays even men bleach their skin. But I had always thought that it was a folly confined to those of us who are of African origin. However, it now seems that it is catching on all over the world.

In India, home of one of the world’s oldest civilisations, skin-whitening creams have seen a sharp rise in sales. In the nine months to September 2009, sales have increased 17 per cent from last year. The total market is worth $432 million, according to the marketing and advertising research firm Nielsen. And as the market expands, make-up and skincare companies are increasingly marketing creams, based on “skin-lightening technology”, for women as well as men. The assumption is that the whiter the skin, the more attractive the person.

Garnier (owned by the L’Oréal Group) is the world’s largest cosmetics company. Last year it launched Garnier Men in India. The line includes the “PowerLight” range of skin-lightening grooming products. John Abraham, a model, Bollywood actor, star of the film Water, and idol to hundreds of potential consumers, is the brand ambassador. “Today, Indian men are big time into grooming,” said Abraham at last year’s launch. “They look after themselves and want to look good, too. But there are not enough products to meet their growing needs, at least not of international quality.”

But Garnier’s skin-bleaching product for men is not the first on the market. Unilever’s (Hindustan) “Fair & Lovely” is the market leader in women’s skin-lightening products and it was launched in 1978. So the beauty and health-care group Emami launched the male equivalent, Fair & Handsome, in 2005. It is billed as “the world’s No 1 fairness cream” and is the male market leader. In 2008 its sales topped $13 million.

Shahrukh Khan, another Bollywood superstar, is the brand ambassador. “I share a long and fruitful association with the Emami Group and this is yet another step toward strengthening my faith in them and their products,” Khan noted on the Fair & Handsome website.

Other international brands are trying to get a toehold in the lucrative skin-bleaching market. L’Oréal Dermo-Expertise White is a well-known skincare brand and is sold in Singapore, Hong Kong and Taiwan; the DiorSnow skincare range, launched in 2001, promises to enhance the skin’s translucency; and Estée Lauder’s CyberWhite EX, a brightening skincare system launched in 2008, which claims to reduce skin pigmentation, was specifically created and tested in Asia.

It is bad enough that people of colour act out their self-hatred by bleaching their skin, but it is worse that European-led multinationals are making a profit out of it.

The rising interest in skin bleaching in India is particularly depressing. They have a historic culture that ought to build their self-esteem. They have a film industry to rival Hollywood and this ought to offer them various images of beauty. Yet still they seem to have become entranced with Western notions of loveliness that the whiter you are the more attractive you are.

The world is topsy-turvy. On the one hand, white women pay big bucks for expensive tanning treatments so that they can look nice and brown. They also pay good money for plastic surgery so that they can have full, round lips and bottoms just like black women. Yet black and brown people are trying to bleach themselves to look more like white people.

The notion that “Black is Beautiful” definitely needs to be revived.