Many Peace Corps volunteers, myself included, coming from an environment and concern of US racism, run across skin whitening of various sorts from photo processing, to clearly unhealthful bleach, to commercial cosmetics. We balk. In my host country there was plenty of talk of colonialism and passively offered accusations. Generally they were of questionable substantiality. In this case though, from an American perspective, the “colonial” and “neocolonialist” influence is deceivingly easy to deride. Today, danah boyd has offered me an intriguing perspective on skin whitening.
It was just out of curiosity so I can’t remember what all I read but I remembered being startled by the class-based histories of artificial skin coloring, having expected it to be all about race. Apparently, tanning grew popular with white folks earlier in the 20th century to mark leisure and money. If you could be tan in winter, it showed that you had the resources to go to a warm climate. If you could be tan in summer, it showed that you weren’t stuck in the factories for work…That we can’t see it simply in light of race, but as a complex interplay between race, class, and geography.
Its true. I never heard any East African rail against skin whitening. It is a tempting target but probably a nonissue in a different cultural context. This clash between Indian branch of Vasoline brand and the US reminds me of another cultural chasm brought into contrast by the social internet: the Makmende meme.
Ethan Zuckerman wrote about how Wikipedians adamantly wanted to erase the article for Makmende as it didn’t seem relevant or significant. As the meme crossed Kenyan blogs it was quite notable in those circles but not reachable by the average westerner wikipedia editors.
These kinds of misunderstandings rarely reach us in the US, especially not as we sit down at our computers. They greet and grate on volunteers and international workers constantly–Pretty much whenever they walk out the door of their comfy homes.
Unsmilingly photogenic. Did you think honest portraits required smiles?
Are there any more examples of Cultural Collisions that you’ve seen recently?
That’s a great observation. In the Philippines, I asked someone in my town why people wanted so badly to whiten their skin. They said, simply, “if suggests that they have not been working in the rice fields all day.” Again, simple, but it blew my mind. I stopped trying to convince people that whitening was unhealthy since I was going to the beach every weekend to darken my “beautiful, white skin.”
By the way, I don’t mean to downplay colonialism’s influence–its obviously a substantial regional factor and it certainly has greatly influenced, and burdened, the flow of events and poverty to the current day. Its just hard to do anything about it directly.
I’m echoing Sean’s observation. My mom always advised me to wash my skin with lemon peel so it would be whiter. When I visited Taiwan, where my mom is from, there were countless commercials advertising soaps and lotions that would create white, supple skin like tofu.
Just like in the Phillipines, it was more of a socioeconomic than racial statement.
Here’s something I just saw on a friend’s FB wall having to do with a FB app targeted at users in India.