Asian Skin: The Lighter the Better

In the article "Soap," Anne McClintock discusses the historical context of soap in relation to the ways in which it is advertised. The methods used in many of the advertisements were often racist and relied on age-old connotations of dark skin as somehow dirty and unclean. A similar and equally disturbing phenomenon is occurring in several Asian countries, where light skin is one of the ultimate signs of beauty. All one has to do is type "skin whitening" into Google to see that there is a massive market for people looking for ways to lighten their skin. These results range from soaps that claim to make your skin lighter to skin whitening pills. For many Asian cultures, lighter skin is indicative of a higher social status and power and, therefore, beautiful. Those with much darker skin are considered unpretty due to connotations of the lower, working class.

I've grown up often times hearing my mom tell me not to stay out in the sun for too long because I'll get so dark she "can't see me," but as a Filipino-American, I'm well aware that my heritage is notorious for its cautionary sun exposure warnings. These advisories are not because of the potential skin cancer that I could get from being outside in the sun (at least explicitly), but solely because of how dark my skin will become. In the Philippines, often times television programs only feature light-skinned celebrities (which are the only kind of celebrities in the Philippines) and TV personalities. In advertisements for Jollibee, the largest fast-food chain in the Philippines, only fair-skinned families are depicted eating from a bucket of Chicken Joy.