Great article
We see a lot of that stuff here in the UAE too, given the large populations of Indians and Pakistanis, yet the fairness issues are not exclusive to them. I've seen a few other nationalities with commonly darker skin tones go for them. I think it's crap. It's like spray-painting a cat.
The article got me thinking about hair colour as well. Especially how a lot of Japanese girls seem to want to be blonde, or with generally lighter coloured hair.
In most cultures, there seems to be this association between beauty and fair hair or skin. In ancient Arabic poetry, beauty was often personified as a woman with hair as black as the night sky but skin as white as alabaster. I guess they had a thing for white chicks back in those days. That still holds true today, for the most part.
Coming back to the subject, I can understand that certain characteristics may be appealing to a person versus other characteristics, just basic physical attraction, but when it's at a national scale I suspect there's a cultural problem. If one gender from a certain group of people are not attracted to any of the opposite gender in their region, it raises a lot of questions in the social norms of the region.
Funnily enough, the stereotypes here in the UAE demonstrate something like that: white guys date Asian girls; black guys date white girls; South Indian girls date fair-skinned North Indian boys, etc.
I think the presence of "skin fairness" products (among others) is a reflection of a skewed perception of beauty in our cultures.
