© Yinyu Mao - Creative Commons 2.0

This is a newspaper article I wrote a while back, but never got around to finding a publisher for.  What better place for it than my second ever blog post:

She’s fresh out of university, talented, and longs to be a journalist.  Yet she’s getting nowhere: “Just before my fourth interview, I realised that the obstacle to obtaining my dream job was my skin”.  Ten seconds into this television advertisement, many viewers might be able to identify with the plight of this young woman trying to overcome discrimination in the workplace.  One month later, however, she’s reporting live from a tent in the Egyptian desert and surrounded by admirers.  (See the video here).

Has she campaigned to draw attention to unfair recruitment procedures, or taken her employers to a labour tribunal?  Her solution is simpler: she has used a product by Indian cosmetics brand Fair and Lovely to lighten her skin and achieve “total fairness”.

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