Saturated White

Sepia Mutiny:

This past Memorial Day, I opened the medicine cabinet at my aunt’s house looking for toothpaste only to find a tube of Fair & Lovely staring back at me. My heart sank. I yelled for my 10-year old cousin. “What is THIS?” I asked her, holding the tube gingerly.

“What?” she said innocently, “It’s just suntan lotion so I don’t get dark.” I looked at the ingredient list. Indeed, among the ingredients was “sunscreen.” I shouldn’t have been surprised. This was the same girl who had teased her seven-year old darker-skinned cousin so much that a year later, the poor kid still adamantly states “I’m not pretty.” Little wonder given that our mothers come from a country where bridal makeup still means you pancake the woman in white foundation from the neck-up and then hide her hands under her dupatta so the color disparity doesn’t show.

I remember being amused by photographs of various brides and grooms in Pakistani magazines. The grooms came in all colors. The brides, however, had the same tinge: vampire-white.

Comments

[Classical Liberal]

For whatever it is worth, I once knew a guy who had lived in South Korea and Taiwan, teaching English. He told me that they have the same sort of "lightening cream" in those countries as well.

[Classical Liberal]

Okay, some comments at the source blog say the same thing. Some others make the point that it is about wealth (they say class). Wealthy is usually sexy, in particular for women. Here in the U.S. it used to be, say in the 1800s, that women wanted to be fair skinned; to have a tan meant that you worked outside at manual labor. Now many low paying jobs are indoors, and to have a smooth tan indicates you have the means to use a tanning salon or lie on the beach.

Likewise, take a look at Renaissance paintings. The women in them are usually quite plump, meaning they were wealthy enough to not have to work hard and always had plenty of food. Now a lean, athletic body is considered sexy.