Fair and Lovely???

Every day on TV I see at least one, if not 5 or 6, commercial for "skin lightening cream". One of them is called "Fair and Lovely"; Loreal has one, Ponds has one, pretty much every skin care product has one; there are even some for men. In India people want to be lighter skinned, apparently the lighter your skin the more beautiful you are.
Some of these commercials are completely ridiculous, like one where a girl's father gives her some of the skin lightening cream and because her skin is lighter she becomes a movie star; in another the girl gets proposed to by a boy that never noticed her before because she used this cream and in "just 7 days" she was fairer.
As someone who is incredibly fair I find the whole thing very strange. Being super pale for me means always having to worry about a sun burn; making sure I have sunscreen on and keeping an eye out for shade whenever possible. I've tried to explain to people here that have complimented me on my nice fair skin how it is actually not easy to be so pale but they don't understand. I suppose if you have never gotten a sunburn it can be difficult to comprehend the dangers of the sun.
I had kind of assumed that these lotions weren't that popular; one guy in the office was using Fair and Lovely and when people found out they promptly gave him a very hard time about it; but I did know that people tried to stay out of the sun; one girl went on vacation and came back with a tan and when I commented on her "nice tan" she told me that her mother in law was very angry with her for getting a tan.
But this weekend I discovered that not only is this desire to be fair real but people will actually bleach their skin! I was at my little spa getting a manicure and my hair mask thingy (the third time I've gotten it done and it seems to be the solution to my hair falling out problem - very exciting) and there was a woman who had a mask on her face and neck which was white and she sat with it on for about 20 minutes. Then another woman came in and had it done. I asked my friend and she said yes, they are bleaching their skin.
Crazy, huh! At this spa they use only natural ingredients so it is probably relatively safe but I imagine that some places use pretty harsh stuff. As I was leaving one girl came in who looked almost sickly, obviously she had been bleaching her skin for a very very long time and now she just looked like she could really use some color.
Funny, in the US it is all about fake tans and here in Asia it is all about being light-skinned. My friend whose is Canadian but has Indian parents had to tell the girls at the spa that she is allergic to bleach because they couldn't understand why she wouldn't want to be lighter. The girls also always comment that I'm very beautiful...because I'm fair. I wonder...I'm going to Goa this weekend for some beach time. Not that I ever really get tan but I definitely get a darker shade of pale...will people comment on my tan in a bad way? Well, my hair will probably get even blonder from swimming in the ocean so people will probably notice that more than my little tan.