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Asia and the Color of Beauty
White is beautiful. Among the cultures within the Asia-Pacific region, white skin translates to feminine beauty, desirability and class. From China to India, Korea to Thailand, white or pale skin is an obsession among the fairer sex. Before you think Malaysian girls and Chinese gals want to be White, no, they do not want to be White; they do not want to look White. They just want white skin.
Women from these cultures go to crazy lengths to get white skin. In Vietnam, women shun sunlight like vampires. When out in the sun, they cover themselves from heads to toe with hats, face masks, big sunglasses, long-sleeve shirts, and umbrellas. Arm-length gloves are a must, and in a tropical climate that is just self-torture. Morning joggers/runners wrap their bodies in swathing fabric like mummies. Also, sunbathing is unthinkable, though Chinese beach goers recently cracked that particular problem with full body suits and masks. Burkini has got nothing on the face-kini!
Of course just avoiding the sun wouldn’t transform these women into Snow White, so they turn to skin-whitening products. And these products sell better than hotcakes, with East Asia being the largest consumer of all. A recent survey by the London-based Synovate found 4 out of 10 women surveyed in South Korea, Hong Kong, Malaysia, the Philippines and Taiwan use skin-whitening products. In India, the skin-whitening market was worth $432 million in 2010 and growing at 18% annually. Skincare in China is a $5 billion market, with 71% coming from whitening products alone.
You can find whitening products everywhere in these countries. Local 7-11s in Thailand carry them. Even Thai beverage companies got into the act. Soft drinks with vitamin C claim to make skin whiter. And Thais’ obsession with white skin had reached a crazy high in mid-2012 with whitening products for women’s pubic area. According to a Guardian article in September 2012, “Products promising to lighten the face, body and armpits are already available across the country, with skin-whitening pills and diet supplements claiming to pick up where the cosmetics leave off. But this is the first time that a vaginal whitening wash has hit the Thai market.”
If you think Thai women were pioneers in vagina whitening, you’d be wrong; a few months earlier, vagina whitening products hit the Indian market. Recently, demand for skin-whitening products aimed at men is on the rise, too. In China and India, brands have added new products such as whitening soaps, aftershaves, and moisturizers.
In Cambodia, we are more relaxed about our skin color. In contrast to our neighbors, Khmers have very dark skin (people in the region call us the blacks of Asia). Unless we have money to go all Michael Jackson, there is nothing much we can do about our skin. And Khmers are poor; beauty and skincare products are viewed as luxury items. However, with a recent economic growth, Khmer women now have a little more money to spend on their looks. Coupled with the invasion of South Korean television dramas and soap operas at the beginning of this decade, white skin is becoming quite popular among urban women.
But white skin’s growing popularity in Cambodia has also brought about its first casualty. In 2010, a young woman in Banteay Meanchey province died from a violent reaction to a face-whitening cream she used, forcing the government to ban several brands of whitening products and beauty salons all over the country. In 2007 and 2008, studies in Cambodia on whitening products found that about one-third of skin whitening creams sold in Phnom Penh markets contained high amounts of mercury. A later study in 2013 showed these products still had mercury in them; one cream had 30,000 times the amount of mercury allowed in developed countries. These same products are available in neighboring countries as well.
Before people start screaming white imperialism, preference for white skin can be traced back to ancient China and India when half of Europe were still living in caves. There are Chinese idioms: “One white covers up one hundred ugliness” and “white, wealthy, and beautiful.” Idealizing white skin seems to be getting crazier and crazier. I doubt vitamin D deficiency, kidney failure, or even death would stop these women from bleaching their skin. Asian women want to be white, western women want to be tan; I wonder when we will be happy with how we look.
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A few centuries ago, Western women also wanted to be as white as possible. A tan was a sign of a woman in poverty who had to work out in the sun. Think of the make-ups used in the time of Queen Elizabeth I. Even the men at times wore whitening make-up. Many of those make-ups used through the Eighteenth Century were lead-based, and like those modern mercury-based make-ups you cite, poisoned their users.
It was only when women started working in factories that pallor became a sign of poverty in the West, and suddenly a tan became the province of the rich.
That has been switching around again, though, as skin cancer and aging effects caused by too much sunshine have been noted. Now, it is again poorer or low-class folks who tan, either naturally or in tanning beds, while the upper classes tend to tan less often now.
This saddens me since we’re in the 21st century.
Maybe you’re not around enough female college students or see the western beauty world on YouTube/Instagram/etc, but they’re all fake tanned.
Agreed. But humans are humans and will probably never outgrow this sort of nonsense. It’s hard not to conform. It’s hard to accept who one is, especially for the young. It’s very hard not to try to do things that may lead to a better life, such as marrying up. Look at how many Hollywood types ruin their looks through surgeries in the name of ‘looking better” and “looking younger.”
Fake tanned? Meaning through tanning beds? Or through substances smeared on the body?
Both, though the latter is more popular now. I know fake tan lotion, cream, spray, makeup are huge in the beauty aisles in American stores.
Not a place I often go. I did make a foray into such recently, but was so overwhelmed by the caterpillar eyebrows I noticed little else. ;)
Actually, what’s old is new again, with a slight variation.
For medicinal reasons, getting Vitamin D from the Sun is better than taking a pill. You don’t get much Vitamin D from your face, so covering the head to reduce wrinkles makes sense. Many informed people (generally middle to upper class) are now doing this, slowly tanning without burning, which also reduces the skin cancer risk.
Tanning beds do not have the correct light (UVA) to generate Vitamin D, as UVB is needed.
Wow! That is the strangest post I’ve ever read.! I had no idea! Is that why geishas paint their faces white? Is there a lack of confidence in Asian culture among women including appearance? In most fashion and beauty magazines, once dominated by white models, nowadays it’s rare to see a white model, especially on the cover. So I assumed that the message has been multi-cultural is preferred, in beauty and in general – a good thing.
On the flip side, most Caucasian women worship the sun, going to tanning beds or using products to darken their skin because it makes you look healthier and more attractive than being pale! What a strange world! Thanks for a very interesting post.
What a fascinating post, thanks, LC. It’s a timely reminder that we decadent Western women are not the only ones who often seem to suffer from an obsession to be what we’re not (fat/thin, short/tall, straight-haired/curly-haired, pale/tanned, etc. etc.), sometimes with unhealthy and even disastrous consequences.
It also reminds me of the bad old days, when National Geographic (to which I used to be an enthusiastic subscriber, decades ago) used to fill its pages with articles and photos of other cultures–where they lived, how they lived, what they believed, what they did, and so on. And so we learned about the “neck-stretching” rings used in Africa and the Far-East to make women’s necks appear longer (if I recall correctly, it wasn’t so much that the neck stretched, it was that the collarbone and shoulders collapsed under the weight, making the neck appear longer), and Masai “ear stretching,” (I see this affect in my local grocery store all the time) or Chinese foot binding (thankfully, I think this one’s over, hopefully never to return).
Yes, there may have been an element of superiority and voyeurism among the writers, the photographers and the readers of such. But I can’t help thinking, from today’s vantage point, that perhaps we knew more, and understood more, about both the world and ourselves when we spent a little more time looking at, and thinking about, other cultures in a pretty uncritical way, and we spent a lot less time obsessing about simply running down our own.
Thanks for reminding me again that, under the covers, we’re all only human.
Hey I’ll trade them my Vitiligo. If I live long enough I’ll be an albino.
Ancient Egyptians paintings show women with white skin and men with dark skin. I assume this was to show that the women were rich and didn’t work in the fields, but the men who were rich were into outdoor sports. I don’t think it had anything to do with the actual skin color of the person being depicted.
That’s how I understood the phenomenon among Asians too–as a class marker. To be pale was a sign that you weren’t a peasant working out in the sun.
Informative and sad, LC! Inner peace and joy bring radiance – no matter the skin tone one carries. Beauty is within reach of everyone. Thanks, as always, for this!
Yes, it is. But, the extremes tend to happen in any period when people are trying to change their skin color.
So strange.
In the old, old days women used to blacken their teeth… because that made it look as though they’s had access to lots of sugar, a luxury item then. I think of that whenever I see some impoverished little kid with his gray/black baby teeth…
I don’t quite get why people feel they have to bleach bits of themselves no one ever sees. And that aren’t that visually, um, appealing anyway?
Money and time, I guess.
But I could use one of those Chinese beach suits.
The interesting thing is that although women claim to do this for men, I think skin tone is one of the least important aspect of attractiveness to most modern men.
Certainly, certain men have certain types but I would say most men are very broad in their judgement of attractiveness of different races and ethnicity.
The one thing that all men key in on are markers of physical health like body proportions (and overall dimensions), clear skin, good teeth, healthy looking hair, and bright eyes.
This also dates back to Biblical times. In Song of Solomon, the bride says that she is dark/black but lovely. She says that it’s because her brothers made her the keeper of the vineyards.
My mom loved to lie in the sun. She never burned because she spent all her time slathering on sunscreen–even minimal sunscreen products like Bain de Soleil and Piz Buin were effective if you were applying them constantly. She once told me that she never went out in the sun as a child or teen; this was during the ’30s and ’40s. She said that her mother used to tell her “Don’t go out in the sun, you’ll look like the Italians!”
Here’s the skinny on this topic…
As an American with English-Scottish ancestry, I am truly the whitest white girl you will ever see. This is not an advantage particularly when you live in a sunny state and every possible skin disorder (sun damage, pimples, wrinkles) are blatantly obvious. “People of color” (I do dislike that term but couldn’t find a better replacement) should be grateful for all the camouflage they can get!
@lizzietee-Welcome to Ricochet! (You joined on my birthday)
As for the OP, I think to some extent it is a question of the grass is always greener.. Each group wants what it lacks.
I am red head, my brother is a very dark skinned Indian from Calcutta. I have always been jealous of his ability to not burn and not use sun block. I tend to cover up with hats and stuff and hide indoors.
My mom would cringe at hearing about anyone skipping sunscreen, no matter how dark they are. I’m almost at that level now too.
Welcome aboard.
[Duplicate comment]
In college I read a book dictated by an old Chinese woman around the end of the monarchy where she defended the practice of foot binding by saying that a pretty face was something a woman was just born with, but a well bound foot showed that the woman put some effort into making herself beautiful. While foot binding has thankfully been cast into the trash heap of history, I wonder how widespread is the attitude that a woman has to show that she is actively doing something to make herself attractive as opposed to coasting on natural beauty, and if this is relevant to the topic at hand.