A Whiter Facebook

Racked is no longer publishing. Thank you to everyone who read our work over the years. The archives will remain available here; for new stories, head over to Vox.com, where our staff is covering consumer culture for The Goods by Vox. You can also see what we’re up to by signing up here.

Vaseline is promoting a new line of skintone-lightening products for men by launching a skin-whitening Facebook app in India. The app, which lightens skin in Facebook photos, is fronted by Bollywood actor Shahid Kapur (right), in a before-after split-screen depicting the difference. "More and more, there's an anxiety in the mind of men about having fair skin," sociology professor T. K. Oommen at the Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi told AFP. "Indians believe that if you have fair skin you belong to the higher caste, the Brahmins. The Aryans, who came from central Asia, in addition to the Portuguese, the French and the British colonisers ruled over the country and probably contributed to this negative perception of dark-skin." [AFP via Boing Boing]