The quest for acceptance and professional success is driving some Hijra persons to fairness treatments that are unregulated and can be risky.
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“Look how dark I was a few years ago, and look at me now,” said Archana Reena Shaikh, a 27-year-old transgender dancer from the Hijra community in Maharashtra’s Shrirampur city, as she scrolled through photos of herself on her phone. “It took five years for me to transform into the beauty you see today,” she said, speaking of her gender transition journey. Her face lit up as she spoke.
The difference between the Archana in the photos and the person sitting in front of me was stark. Her skin seemed smoother than before and she was definitely fairer—excessively so in fact, to the point of appearing pale.
The drastic transformation was the result of fairness injections that Archana had used—once every fortnight initially and then once a month—for nearly a year between mid-2023 and 2024. The key ingredient in the injections is an antioxidant called Glutathione, which is sometimes marketed as a “wonder drug” with skin-lightening properties.
According to the National Cancer Institute, Glutathione is naturally produced in the liver and by aiding in the process of detoxification, it helps protect the body from damage caused by toxins, ageing, and pollutants. It is widely used in skincare products since it is considered effective in preventing tanning and other kinds of skin damage caused by the sun.
Cognitive Market Research, a Pune-based market research and consulting firm, noted in its 2025 report that the Indian market for Glutathione was worth 13.39 million dollars in 2024 and is projected to grow at 12.7 percent annually over the next five years.
For Hijra women like Archana, Glutathione holds a particular appeal. As they transition to align their bodies with their gender identity, they say that the beauty standards set by Bollywood and popularised by social media shape their idea of the feminine ideal. Driven by the desire to be accepted and perceived as women, many of them end up chasing the flawless, glowing fair skin epitomised by their favourite actresses. And in the process, Glutathione injections become an integral part of the lives of some Hijra women. Hijra is a cultural identity in South Asia, involving trans, intersex and nonbinary people.
Hijra women are not the only ones taking these injections though. From Bollywood celebrities to ordinary brides, the usage of Glutathione seems to have become so commonplace that it has begun to feature in the storylines of TV shows such as Made in Heaven.
These treatments, which are unregulated and often performed by unscrupulous clinics indulging in predatory practices, can pose health risks and come at a significant financial cost. The results can be unpredictable and begin to fade sometime after the user stops taking the injections. Yet, they seem to have become a trend.
A few months ago, Taniya Khatun, a hijra woman who also lives in Shrirampur, made a phone call to a clinic in Pune to ask about fairness injections. Taniya recalled a soft-spoken voice answering her call, telling her to visit the clinic whenever she was ready. “We can start the treatment immediately, on the same day,” she said she was told.
“I was already fair, the same as you see me now,” Taniya told me. Yet, she travelled almost 200 kilometres to the clinic in Koregaon Park, Pune to seek treatment. “I took the injections due to peer pressure. It has become a trend [in her community],” she said.
The process was fairly simple. Taniya recalled that when she walked into the clinic, the staff asked for her budget and based on that selected an injection from a range of options. Then, she was told to lie on a bed and hooked up to an intravenous saline drip which contained Glutathione. Once the drip was finished, she said she was charged Rs 3000 and sent on her way.
The only instruction she was given was that for the injection to be truly effective, she needed to avoid exposing her skin to the sun and pollution for too long. Taniya, who is dependent on begging and dancing at public functions for an income, had to mostly ignore the directive. Maybe because of that, she said, she did not notice any change in her skin colour. She went back to the clinic for one more injection after the initial one.
Taniya’s experience is in line with medical knowledge of Glutathione’s effects. “It is a very slow-acting drug so it takes time for it to show effect. You will start seeing noticeable changes in colouration if you take it for the whole year, with the periodicity of an injection every three weeks,” said Shashank*, a dermatologist who works at two private hospitals in the National Capital Region. “But there is no guarantee that the fairness you achieved will last after that. We have seen the older colouration return after 3-4 months if patients stopped taking the injections.
Unlike Taniya, Archana persisted with the injections for much longer, taking 15 in total over the year. But when she stopped taking them, the Glutathione glow started to fade away. “I was even fairer than what you see now. The effects have reduced 50 percent,” she said with a hint of disappointment. Archana had spent Rs 53,000 on the treatment. That is roughly five months of income for her. She said she makes about Rs 10,000 a month through dance performances and begging.
The Hijra women I spoke to in Shrirampur told me that a two-person dance show typically earns them a total of Rs 2,000, while a four-person group performance might bring in Rs 5,000, exclusive of travel costs. Tilotama Patil, a 34-year-old Hijra woman who also lives in Shrirampur, said the Hijra women in her community are only able to get shows twice a month. They rely on tips to bolster their earnings, but Taniya told me that people often do not tip.
Almost all the Hijra women I spoke to for this story said that fairness treatments are becoming a financial burden for them. “We are left with no balance between how much we invest in our bodies and how much we earn. Fairness treatments alone cost more than what we make through dancing,” said Tilotama.
“Look how dark I was a few years ago, and look at me now,” said Archana Reena Shaikh, a 27-year-old transgender dancer from the Hijra community in Maharashtra’s Shrirampur city, as she scrolled through photos of herself on her phone. “It took five years for me to transform into the beauty you see today,” she said, speaking of her gender transition journey. Her face lit up as she spoke.
The difference between the Archana in the photos and the person sitting in front of me was stark. Her skin seemed smoother than before and she was definitely fairer—excessively so in fact, to the point of appearing pale.
The drastic transformation was the result of fairness injections that Archana had used—once every fortnight initially and then once a month—for nearly a year between mid-2023 and 2024. The key ingredient in the injections is an antioxidant called Glutathione, which is sometimes marketed as a “wonder drug” with skin-lightening properties.
According to the National Cancer Institute, Glutathione is naturally produced in the liver and by aiding in the process of detoxification, it helps protect the body from damage caused by toxins, ageing, and pollutants. It is widely used in skincare products since it is considered effective in preventing tanning and other kinds of skin damage caused by the sun.
Cognitive Market Research, a Pune-based market research and consulting firm, noted in its 2025 report that the Indian market for Glutathione was worth 13.39 million dollars in 2024 and is projected to grow at 12.7 percent annually over the next five years.
For Hijra women like Archana, Glutathione holds a particular appeal. As they transition to align their bodies with their gender identity, they say that the beauty standards set by Bollywood and popularised by social media shape their idea of the feminine ideal. Driven by the desire to be accepted and perceived as women, many of them end up chasing the flawless, glowing fair skin epitomised by their favourite actresses. And in the process, Glutathione injections become an integral part of the lives of some Hijra women. Hijra is a cultural identity in South Asia, involving trans, intersex and nonbinary people.
Hijra women are not the only ones taking these injections though. From Bollywood celebrities to ordinary brides, the usage of Glutathione seems to have become so commonplace that it has begun to feature in the storylines of TV shows such as Made in Heaven.
These treatments, which are unregulated and often performed by unscrupulous clinics indulging in predatory practices, can pose health risks and come at a significant financial cost. The results can be unpredictable and begin to fade sometime after the user stops taking the injections. Yet, they seem to have become a trend.
A few months ago, Taniya Khatun, a hijra woman who also lives in Shrirampur, made a phone call to a clinic in Pune to ask about fairness injections. Taniya recalled a soft-spoken voice answering her call, telling her to visit the clinic whenever she was ready. “We can start the treatment immediately, on the same day,” she said she was told.
“I was already fair, the same as you see me now,” Taniya told me. Yet, she travelled almost 200 kilometres to the clinic in Koregaon Park, Pune to seek treatment. “I took the injections due to peer pressure. It has become a trend [in her community],” she said.
The process was fairly simple. Taniya recalled that when she walked into the clinic, the staff asked for her budget and based on that selected an injection from a range of options. Then, she was told to lie on a bed and hooked up to an intravenous saline drip which contained Glutathione. Once the drip was finished, she said she was charged Rs 3000 and sent on her way.
The only instruction she was given was that for the injection to be truly effective, she needed to avoid exposing her skin to the sun and pollution for too long. Taniya, who is dependent on begging and dancing at public functions for an income, had to mostly ignore the directive. Maybe because of that, she said, she did not notice any change in her skin colour. She went back to the clinic for one more injection after the initial one.
Taniya’s experience is in line with medical knowledge of Glutathione’s effects. “It is a very slow-acting drug so it takes time for it to show effect. You will start seeing noticeable changes in colouration if you take it for the whole year, with the periodicity of an injection every three weeks,” said Shashank*, a dermatologist who works at two private hospitals in the National Capital Region. “But there is no guarantee that the fairness you achieved will last after that. We have seen the older colouration return after 3-4 months if patients stopped taking the injections.
Unlike Taniya, Archana persisted with the injections for much longer, taking 15 in total over the year. But when she stopped taking them, the Glutathione glow started to fade away. “I was even fairer than what you see now. The effects have reduced 50 percent,” she said with a hint of disappointment. Archana had spent Rs 53,000 on the treatment. That is roughly five months of income for her. She said she makes about Rs 10,000 a month through dance performances and begging.
The Hijra women I spoke to in Shrirampur told me that a two-person dance show typically earns them a total of Rs 2,000, while a four-person group performance might bring in Rs 5,000, exclusive of travel costs. Tilotama Patil, a 34-year-old Hijra woman who also lives in Shrirampur, said the Hijra women in her community are only able to get shows twice a month. They rely on tips to bolster their earnings, but Taniya told me that people often do not tip.
Almost all the Hijra women I spoke to for this story said that fairness treatments are becoming a financial burden for them. “We are left with no balance between how much we invest in our bodies and how much we earn. Fairness treatments alone cost more than what we make through dancing,” said Tilotama.
“Glutathione was never meant to make people fair,” said Shashank. “It was an accidental discovery. When doctors were using it to treat patients for liver conditions, they noticed a change in the skin colouration of patients. That is how it came to be marketed as a fairness drug.”
The Central Drugs Standard Control Organisation, India's national regulatory body for cosmetics, pharmaceuticals, and medical devices, has only approved Glutathione for use in the treatment of liver-related diseases. However, hospitals and clinics across the country now offer it as a treatment to increase fairness and improve skin quality. The drug is also available in tablet and gel form, but injecting it is considered the most effective method to get immediate results.
“From big pharma to small drug manufacturers, everyone is making it. From big hospitals to small roadside clinics, everyone is injecting it,” said Shashank. “Around 2021, when my dermatologist friends and I started providing this treatment, we'd get about 5-6 patients in a month. But now, some of my friends are injecting Glutathione to 3-4 patients every day in Delhi NCR.”
Since its usage as a skin treatment is not officially approved, how it is administered varies wildly from one dermatologist to the next. “There are absolutely no guidelines. No dosage recommendations, no idea about how long it should be given and what is safe or unsafe. People are using it based on their whims and fancies,” said Shashank.
To get a first-hand experience of how easy it is to access Glutathione IV treatment and how predatory the clinics can be, I called up a clinic near my home in Salt Lake, Kolkata and made an appointment. While I was on my way I got three calls from the clinic in 20 minutes to know how far I was.
After I arrived at the clinic, I was then taken into a small chamber where a woman in her late 20s began suggesting fairness treatment options, including Glutathione injections. There were three options for the Glutathione injection — basic, advance, and premier. The basic option would involve 600 mg dosage per injection and cost Rs 36,000 for 15 sessions, advance was 20,000 mg for Rs 48,000, and premier was 90,000 mg for Rs 84,000. The main difference among them, she said, was that the injections with higher doses would lead to an “overall better effect on the skin and health.” When I asked about the side effects, she said, “It is completely safe.” The clinic staff was keen that I start the treatment right away. When I attempted to stall, saying I needed to think about it and discuss the cost with my family, the clinic manager offered discounts as well as EMI options which could be approved in 10 minutes flat.
For those who don’t want to deal with the cost of accessing it through a clinic, procuring Glutathione online is scarily trivial. When I googled “order glutathione injection,” a long list of corporate pharmacies and e-commerce websites showed up, promising to deliver Glutathione vials, in a variety of dosages and prices. Within 10 minutes of sharing my phone number with the e-commerce directory, Just Dial, I received messages from multiple vendors offering to ship the injections to my home.
“In our community, we see that people have started purchasing these injections online and injecting it with the help of nurses who can implant an IV either at home or at local clinics,” said Tilotama. Multiple Hijra women I spoke to in Shrirampur said that this helps them not only cut the cost but also gives them the freedom to take higher doses. Their reasoning is that higher doses, taken more frequently, mean quicker, more effective results.
This kind of unregulated and unsupervised use of Glutathione injections can be harmful. The US Food and Drug Administration warned in a 2019 advisory that potential side effects from Glutathione injections could include harmful impacts on the liver, kidneys and nervous system.
Rashmi Sarkar, Director Professor at the Department of Dermatology, Leprosy, and Venereology at Lady Hardinge Medical College and Hospital, told me that while topical and oral Glutathione are relatively safer, they should not be used indiscriminately without a dermatologist’s advice. The intravenous injection of the same drug is a “strict no because of the side effects.”
“We don’t know in which way it will work. The results can be unpredictable and the procedure can lead to severe side-effects. It can have renal side effects, severe skin reactions, sometimes it can lead to peeling of the entire skin,” she said. Adding that these side effects don’t occur all the time, she emphasised that due to the lack of clinical trials involving Glutathione injections, doctors are flying blind with regard to potential risks. Shashank, however, said that none of his patients ever had any side effects.
In an article published in The Print, Deepali Bhardwaj, a dermatologist and aesthetician, wrote, “Glutathione affects your kidney function in the long run. You need to know what dosage works for you. And you will need to first take a kidney test to see the viability of administering the glutathione injection.” Both Archana and Taniya told me that they were neither asked to undergo any tests before or after taking these injections nor were they told about any potential side effects.
The potential risks do not seem to faze Archana though. “We do not care about the side effects. Most of us live a short life, we rather live it satisfied,” she said firmly.
The quest for fair skin can also have serious implications for the mental health of Hijra persons.
In a 2020 study, 38 percent of Hijra persons reported having some kind of mental health condition. These challenges, the studies note, are systemic and often stem from societal stigma, discrimination, rejection by family and friends, violence and lack of access to appropriate healthcare services.
For the Hijra women of Shrirampur, pre-existing mental health pressures are exacerbated by society’s emphasis on conventional beauty standards, and sometimes lead to a deep sense of isolation and despair.
“For a Hijra woman, it is important to look like a woman. And the image of a woman is all about fair skin, a thin waist, long hair and pink, puffed lips,” said Tilotama. The goal, as she puts it, is to escape the popular imagination of a Hijra woman as “someone with dark and heavy makeup, whose face is packed with layers of foundation that do not match the rest of her body.”
But the quest for acceptance through fair skin among the Hijra community isn’t confined to Shrirampur. Yoga S. Nambiar, who has a PhD in mental health and is the founder of the Global Rights Foundation, an Ulhasnagar-based NGO focused on transgender welfare, said that the phenomenon is widespread. “I can vouch for Delhi, Maharashtra and Punjab and say that around 45 percent of community members are taking these glutathione injections and also pills,” she told me.
This struggle does not end at fair skin but leads them to other treatments too. “From skin whitening treatments to lip fillers and liposuctions (cosmetic fat removal surgery) too, almost all of us save for years to get these procedures done,” Tilotama said. “It is not just about becoming fair, it is about finding self-acceptance.”
Tilotama sees having fair skin partly as a professional requirement—being perceived as attractive helps Hijra performers get more shows.
It has been 17 years since Tilotama started her gender transition journey. Now 34, she has never taken a Glutathione injection, nor does she wish to take one because she believes she is already fair. She said she can maintain her skin tone by using fairness creams. Tilotama believes that the aggressive marketing of fair skin tones through social media and films is the main reason driving this generational shift.
“Earlier, Hijra women from our community would follow heroines like Kajol and many like her who were not fair; the darker shades were appreciated more back then,” said Tilotama. Kajol, a Bollywood actress who debuted in the early 90s, has spoken of how she was taunted for being dark in her early days in the industry. Her skin has become markedly fairer in the decades since. While she denies using any skin treatments, attributing her fairness to “staying out of the sun,” other Bollywood actresses and social media celebrities are quite open about the treatments they use, including Glutathione.
These kinds of cultural shifts are forcing some Hijra performers to adapt even though many of them may not be able to afford such treatments. Outfits once inspired by traditional, conservative styles have been replaced by revealing costumes: blouses with thin bra-like straps and skirts with thigh-high slits. “Our livelihood depends on adapting to these trends,” Tilotama said. “If we don’t, we’re left behind or forced to perform [only] in rural areas where the pay is significantly lower.”
As a result, Hijra women in rural places like Shirampur find themselves striving to embrace a beauty ideal that can be unattainable or damaging.
Tilotama described to me how when a dancer from a city is hired in their small town, she brings the city fashion with her. After that, she said, audiences only want to see dancers who resemble them. In order to compete, women like Taniya and Archana sign up for endless procedures and treatments to alter their bodies.
“If you open a shop or a parlour, if you decorate that shop and invest in it then only you will be able to attract customers, right? Similarly, we need to invest in our bodies and look pretty, then only we can get work. After all, people only care about outer beauty and not skills anymore,” Tilotama explained.
In Yoga’s opinion, the pressure to be fair comes not just from professional compulsions, but also from wanting to be a desirable romantic partner. “I think transgender people are taking Glutathione because the livelihoods they are dependent on like badhai, toli or begging involve a lot of exposure to the sun, which makes the skin dull. But the general expectation is to look good and attractive so your boyfriend will love you more and stay with you,” she said. “Hijra women really believe that if they start looking more and more like a [cis]woman their boyfriends will come back to them. But, honestly, nothing of that sort happens, boys come, have fun and then leave.”
“There is no shortcut to self-acceptance, one needs to seek support from supportive individuals,” said Meenal Solanki, a Delhi-based counselling psychologist. She believes that the journey towards self-acceptance for Hijra women like Archana needs to include a collective, community-based approach.
“For a queer person, I feel social support—finding your people, other queers, a sense of community—is extremely important,” she said. “Receiving compassion from or even being around queer individuals, who are vibrantly themselves in all their shapes & sizes, who model self-compassion, will be super helpful for queer individuals to fast track self-compassion, along with working in therapy.
But the path Meenal is prescribing is less straightforward than the one offered by skin clinics eager to add to their bottom line.
“Tomorrow is my ex-boyfriend's marriage and on this occasion, I have decided to put my entire efforts to be prettier than his wife,” Archana’s voice echoes.
Having taken a six-month break, Archana is now planning to start taking Glutathione injections again. She wants to invest whatever spare money she has in beauty and has no plans of saving up for old age.
“My last wish is to die fair and pretty, there is nothing else to this life,” she said.
*Names have been changed to protect the identity of the person.
Ekta Sonawane (they/she/he) is a non-binary gender fluid journalist from Maharashtra.
Visvak (they/he) is a writer and editor, mostly of narrative nonfiction.
Sanviti (she/they) is currently doing her master’s in Global Politics and Communication, specialising in media and democracy studies at the University of Helsinki. Prior to that she was working as an assistant editor with the People’s Archive of Rural India.
Jose (she/they) is a non-binary illustrator from Kerala whose work highlights personal stories marked by gender, body experiences, and their South Indian heritage. While not lost in their sketchbook, they can be found devouring all things camp and horror.
Ankur Paliwal (he/him) is an independent journalist, and founder and managing editor of queerbeat.
