It’s sort of like the pressure to be tan (our Irish ass can certainly relate to that), but we’ve never seen a commercial that suggested we couldn’t get a job without a tan. Harsh. Here’s another one that won’t embed. —MEGHANN MARCO
[via BuzzFeed]
Telling India’s Modern Women They Have Power, Even Over Their Skin Tone [NYT]
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Interesting discussion here. I’ve never heard about the “contains mercury” part, but then I only use thing like Porcelana and the like, which don’t contain anything quite that powerful. I have very pale skin and some slight blotches that react quickly to any sun exposure whatsoever, so my sunscreen and whitener are always nearby!
As for the whole tanning thing, when I was on livejournal I was a member of the “paleskin” group. It seemed we spent most of time trading sunscreen tips and consoling naturally-pale American teenagers who got insulted and abused by their peers because they didn’t have tans. Some of it was probably exaggerated (these are teenagers we’re talking about), but it still sounded horrible. Unless you’re fake and orangy, I suppose you’re not “cool.”
@Eyebrows McGee: You are correct that lighter skinned speakers of Indo-European languages (Hindi, Bengali, Punjabi, Marathi, etc…)invaded from the northwest, pushing darker skinned speakers of Dravidian languages (Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, Kannada) into the south. But there was lots of mixing and messiness involved, so it’s not a super simple straightforward correlation between the conquerers and the upper castes.
I’m surprised that you didn’t mention the tendency of people here in my neck of the woods, Taiwan, to dye a very specific area of their skin: their nipples, so that they’ll have nice, rosy, Western-looking tétons:
[onlyredheadintaiwan.blogspot.com]
Unilever (maker of Fair and Beautiful) also owns Dove, with its Real Beauty Campaign and Women’s Self-Esteem Fund. Nice hypocrisy in action there, Unilever.
@VA_White:
This has absolutely NOTHING to do with race. Maybe you’ve never seen a black person, but they come in many different shades. These commercials aren’t about preferring white people (certainly not the Middle Eastern one).
Stop applying your values to cultures you don’t understand.
I could really use something that makes me glow in the dark, “Fake Radioactive Human” but that would not kill me or anything bad.
For those still tuning in, you should read the NYTimes article I posted if possible. The mercury thing is specific to the underground, knock-off type market for skin lighteners. Basically the products that the poor in these Asian countries often use, with tragic results.