I don’t have anything particularly notable to add, but I support your continued attention to this issue.  Colonialism has left a fucked up global legacy.

This is so sad. It’s very distressing to think someone could have lovely skin; and then have cosmetics damage it because they are told it’s the wrong shade.

I live in India, and I can’t get through a single hour of television without seeing at least a dozen ads for skin whitening creams for both men and women. It’s bad enough that they’re hawking these skin creams (dark skin=dirty/unattractive; light/white skin=“fair & lovely”), but the in the cinematography, they blow out the highlights, so that everyone looks unnaturally bleached. No wonder India has such a problem with collective low self-esteem!

India has such a wide range of natural skin colours. I wish that we as a nation could embrace all of them!

Sorry for the double post, but I also wanted to point out, how, when I posted my previous comment, Google ads posted links for the Vaseline Facebook link, and below that, there was a link for Kaya skin whitening cream. Dammit.

Anything I would have to say about this would come off as patronizing, but I used to use vaseline lotion (since they had the stuff with the aloe in it) and I’m thinking it might be time to switch brands.

Colonialism has left a fucked up global legacy.

Sure, and in Africa you have a good argument, but the desire of Asians to lighten their skin predates colonialism by many centuries - it’s not that simple.  Lighter skin has always been a status symbol in Asia because it meant you didn’t work outside, i.e.were not a peasant.

How do they measure “dull complexion”?

moviefanatic:

Correct me if I’m wrong, but doesn’t the skin color thing in India go back further than written language? I’ve been under the impression that Indo-Aryan = light, Dravidian = dark, and the closer you were to the latter the more likely you were to be high-caste.

sorry, closer to the *former*. My brain doesn’t brain so well sometimes.

“What is the appeal of risking permanent damage to your skin by baking on the beach, and even more onerous, using chemicals to bleach your skin?”

Colonialism + Skin damage= Bad.  Is it really necessary to place it in a competitive relationship with second degree burns and melanoma?  How about ‘just as onerous.’  I mean, it’s hard to get a lot more onerous than death.

@BrianX:

I think there are a number of layers to this issue in India. There is a caste issue, (light skin are usually higher caste) but that is gradually fading. Then India was colonized, and lighter skin was representative of power. Now, thanks to Hollywood exports (and myriad other reasons), light/white skin is synonymous with sexiness, attractiveness, success, power etc.

I have another theory also, which is that day labourers (farmers, quarry workers, etc.) work outside in the hot sun, so, they would naturally have darker skin. Hence, dark skin has become synonymous with working-class, poor, uneducated. In contrast, if you have a higher position, you presumably work in a nice, comfortable office, shielded from the sun, so your skin doesn’t get as dark. Light skin then means that you have a high power job, that you’re educated, sophisticated, wealthy, etc.

Contrast this perception with how things are in the US or Europe: if you’re “stuck” as a wage slave in some crappy office job (and you’re white), then your skin will be all milky white, because you can’t do what you really want to do, which is go and play in the sun. If you have a nice tan, then, it probably means that you’ve been able to hang out at the beach or something, which suggests that you have leisure time (or you can go to some exotic location to soak in the sun), which suggests that you’re wealthy.
Everybody seems to romanticize/glamourize other people’s attributes. Weird.

Contrast this perception with how things are in the US or Europe: if you’re “stuck” as a wage slave in some crappy office job (and you’re white), then your skin will be all milky white, because you can’t do what you really want to do, which is go and play in the sun. If you have a nice tan, then, it probably means that you’ve been able to hang out at the beach or something, which suggests that you have leisure time (or you can go to some exotic location to soak in the sun), which suggests that you’re wealthy.
Everybody seems to romanticize/glamourize other people’s attributes. Weird.
iirc, Europe used to be the same as Asia until relatively recently.

It’s sort of like how being fat was a status symbol until plentiful food made it easy to do, at which point being thin took on the same role…

And just to add insult to injury, I’m guessing that their stupid skin-whitening app doesn’t work as well as you might think from the ads… Notice how they’ve lit that shot of Shahid Kapur.

Capitalism and white supremacy are conjoined twins.

I think moviefanatic @11 is right on about the politics of tan vs. light skin in America. Years ago, when being tan meant you were a poor laborer, white skin was prized. Now, with most jobs being inside, being tan means you have leisure time. It’s twisted, this idea of what color skin makes you attractive.

It’s horrible how pervasive the idea of Caucasian=attractive, brown or Asian people=ugly is in the world. In a lot of Asian countries, double-lidded (Caucasian-like) eyes are considered more attractive, so many girls get surgery or use eye glue to get that look. Lighter-skinned people of color are more common on TV. As a white woman, I can’t imagine the scope of the issue, but I’ve seen the idea of lighter skin being more attractive dealt with in books I’ve read by POC authors. The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison and Push by Sapphire are two examples.

It’s sad. And the fact that people’s skin is being damaged because of the light skin ideal is horrible.

I think that picture, with its blown-out highlights (and things even close to highlights) is a testimony to the power of self-deception. And once you’ve taken the step to believe that that version is “better”, you’ll believe anything.

(From a technical standpoint, it’s also very clear that that was a deliberate choice—it’s easy to lighten midtones, i.e. skin, without doing that kind of visual violence.)

Contrast this perception with how things are in the US or Europe: if you’re “stuck” as a wage slave in some crappy office job (and you’re white), then your skin will be all milky white, because you can’t do what you really want to do, which is go and play in the sun. If you have a nice tan, then, it probably means that you’ve been able to hang out at the beach or something, which suggests that you have leisure time (or you can go to some exotic location to soak in the sun), which suggests that you’re wealthy.
Everybody seems to romanticize/glamourize other people’s attributes. Weird.

Comment #11: moviefanatic

Unless you’re one of those White/Hispanics or Africa American.  In which case you’re one of the dirty lower <strike>caste</strike> class .

MaJeff: Your statement is outrageous but erroneous from both an anti-capitalist and pro-capitalist perspective. White supremacy along with all other forms of group surpremacy predates capitalsim by more than a few centuries. Capitalists certainly have been willing to use white surpremacy and other group supremacy in order to make money like all the business people in Nazi Germany who benefited from the theft of Jewish businesses and property. However, there have also been business people who engaged in white surpremacy to the detriment of their ability to earn money by eliminating large numbers of potential customers. There have also been large numbers of non-white capitalists engaged in exploitation of lots of people.

It’s sort of like how being fat was a status symbol until plentiful food made it easy to do, at which point being thin took on the same role…

Enh, pick a human physical trait and I almost guarantee you’ll see variations of the same thing.  A thin, muscular, tanned white guy in 1800?  Probably a farmer.  A thin, tanned, muscular white guy in 2000?  Probably some yuppie with a good gym.

Sure, and in Africa you have a good argument, but the desire of Asians to lighten their skin predates colonialism by many centuries - it’s not that simple.  Lighter skin has always been a status symbol in Asia because it meant you didn’t work outside, i.e.were not a peasant.

Several people beat me to it but it has nothing to do with the English.  In fact if you talk to most Indians they would loathe to be anything like the English, they had the power but they were still soulless by Hindu standards.  It really goes back to exactly what I quoted there, when the Indo-Aryans rolled in they started out the same basic shade as Turkish people, as generations of people lived in the hot bright sun they grew progressively darker.  They though are still Caucasian by biological standards and in most ways look similar to their middle-eastern counterparts. 

The skin lightening is just another fractious way our society works.  Everybody wants to look special and unique.  Think back to the Colonial period in the US or in Europe, the rich wore ill fighting and silly looking clothing by any stretch of the imagination.  Eventually we moved away from such obnoxious things because the rich had to maintain real positions besides “landowner” so they switched to suits that fit well.  Then when upper class women moved from housewives to workers themselves the cocktail dress faded into the business suit.

Simply put, society will stratify themselves and companies are more than happy to feed those trends.  In fact if anything, the corporations are pushing these because if we lived in a function over form society there would be much less variety and more emphasis on value over style leaving our 50-store malls half vacant.  Arguably our society actually runs on stratification now that we’ve moved into Industrial IV/Technology II status and have a need to create extraneous work in order to keep people employed. 

Disturbing when you realize your society needs a functional racism or classism to survive isn’t it?  (PS: I really don’t believe we need to, so don’t get out of hand.)

Comment #21: Xeranar  on  07/14  at  07:35 PM

Ugh….I screwed up the quotes…Let me fix this:

Sure, and in Africa you have a good argument, but the desire of Asians to lighten their skin predates colonialism by many centuries - it’s not that simple.  Lighter skin has always been a status symbol in Asia because it meant you didn’t work outside, i.e.were not a peasant.

Several people beat me to it but it has nothing to do with the English.  In fact if you talk to most Indians they would loathe to be anything like the English, they had the power but they were still soulless by Hindu standards.  It really goes back to exactly what I quoted there, when the Indo-Aryans rolled in they started out the same basic shade as Turkish people, as generations of people lived in the hot bright sun they grew progressively darker.  They though are still Caucasian by biological standards and in most ways look similar to their middle-eastern counterparts.

The skin lightening is just another fractious way our society works.  Everybody wants to look special and unique.  Think back to the Colonial period in the US or in Europe, the rich wore ill fighting and silly looking clothing by any stretch of the imagination.  Eventually we moved away from such obnoxious things because the rich had to maintain real positions besides “landowner” so they switched to suits that fit well.  Then when upper class women moved from housewives to workers themselves the cocktail dress faded into the business suit.

Simply put, society will stratify themselves and companies are more than happy to feed those trends.  In fact if anything, the corporations are pushing these because if we lived in a function over form society there would be much less variety and more emphasis on value over style leaving our 50-store malls half vacant.  Arguably our society actually runs on stratification now that we’ve moved into Industrial IV/Technology II status and have a need to create extraneous work in order to keep people employed.

Disturbing when you realize your society needs a functional racism or classism to survive isn’t it?  (PS: I really don’t believe we need to, so don’t get out of hand.)

Much easier to read, hate to double post…but most people would skip past that terrible quote pyramid.

ArtofMe wrote:

Lighter-skinned people of color are more common on TV.

I’ll admit to having been surprised when WPVI-TV, the ABC owned-and-operated station in Philadelphia, got rid of the cute little white girl, Erica Grow, as their weekend meteorologist and hired Melissa Magee, a very dark complexioned black woman, for that position.  WPVI has several other black women in on-air positions (Tamala Edwards and Lisa Thomas-Laury come to mind), but they are pretty much cafe au lait.

“Apparently human beings are just screwed up and multinational companies have no problem making a buck.”

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