I ran across an article on Jezebel.com that really caught my attention. It was a post about Asian women bleaching their skin because of the pressure to have milky white skin which is equated to status and better for marrying.

If you are like me, you’ve passed these products on grocery shelves or at the local bodegas owned (near me) primarily by Asian, African and Indian families. I’ve seen them before and never gave it a second thought until I saw the post.

After much investigating online, I’ve learned to realize that this isn’t an issue prevalent just in the Asian community, but it’s a cultural issue for most people of color. From Africa to Jamaica, India to China, women- as well as some men- search for a “purer” complexion in the hopes of a higher status.

In African American history, skin bleaching goes back to slavery where the slaves of a lighter shade, mostly products of the master having sex with the female slaves, gave birth to class status. Customarily, the children of a lighter shade of brown primarily worked in the house and were given certain privileges over those slaves who worked in the field in the hot sun picking cotton. This separation bred inter-race racism in African Americans, giving birth to skin color that equated to status.

Similarly, the same sort of “class and status” issues exist among other ethnic groups. The whiter the skin, the less you were considered a poor person, a farmer, laborer, etc.  The pure smoothness of white skin meant that you were inside away from the sun and therefore, must have money to afford not to labor.

Any therapist will tell you that this is the root of self-hatred and one’s lack of self worth. But how do you conquer this issue when the women who grace the most notable magazines,  television commercials, videos and more, are images of this very same type of woman?  One can say that this is also the issue with women and weight. That will be the next issue we tackle.

There are campaigns like Proctor & Gamble’s “My Black Is Beautiful” and DOVE’s “Campaign For Real Women” that focus on the empowerment of women at every age, every skin color and every size. However, these are just two national campaigns compared to the several hundred images from various beauty and fashion products that tell a much different story.

So, my question raises the issue, when will skin color NOT be an issue globally? With the first African American President elected in the United States, the increase in interracial dating and marriages giving birth to multi-ethnic children, are we as a world, especially the United States, ready for the BROWNING of people?

Tell us what you think? FWO: Forwomenonline.com

Read below:

BLEACHING IN AFRICAN, AMERICAN AND CARIBBEAN COUNTRIES:

Ads Pressure Hong Kong Women to Whiten UpBy Katherine Reedy- WeNews correspondent Source:www.womensenews.org

Hong Kong’s public transit is plastered with cosmetics ads promoting a beauty ideal influenced by Western women. Skin-bleaching creams are top sellers in cosmetics shops and media ads promote such things as laser treatments to melt the fat away.
HONG KONG (WOMENSENEWS)–Each day, an estimated 3.5 million people ride on Hong Kong’s rapid transit lines, a captive audience for the advertisers who pack stations and train cars with flat-screens and multimedia billboards with their ad campaigns.
One video you might easily find yourself staring at promotes lingerie and is made by the Japanese company Wacoal.
In the lingerie ad, a serious young man first runs his hands over the bosom and buttocks of a thin woman with dark hair. He is then shown working in a futuristic laboratory crafting undergarments from his observations. In the final scene, an Asian woman with long blond hair and light skin wears a diaphanous gown to highlight her newly sculpted hourglass figure and turns to smile seductively at viewers: She has taken on Caucasian features.
Although the idea of women as commodities is nothing new, the outrage expressed by groups such as the Women’s Media Center in the United States is nowhere to be found in Hong Kong, where the sculpting and paling of the model comes as no surprise.
“I think it’s a conscious effort that they are featuring Caucasian models,” Royce Yuen, chair of both the Ogilvy Group in Hong Kong and of Hong Kong’s Association of Accredited Advertising Agencies, said in a phone interview.

Caucasian models, he said, are used to sell everything from real estate to cheap clothing. The advertisers are not doing it because they “might as well” use the same ad in Hong Kong as elsewhere, Yuen said. They do it because “it gives people the impression that they’re more international and more premium.”

In Hong Kong and other parts of Asia, most clothing stores–ranging from high-end retailers like Prada and Burberry to the mid-range Zara–use the same non-Asian models they feature in campaigns in Europe and North America. Click here to read more.

Widely Held Ideal of Whiter Skin

Pale skin is a widespread cosmetic ideal in Hong Kong. But while many women follow sun-deflecting trends like carrying parasols, others try more drastic measures.

Skin-bleaching is common, according to Synovate, a global market research company with offices in Hong Kong. In 2004 the firm conducted a survey of 2,500 women in Hong Kong, Korea, Malaysia, the Philippines and Taiwan and found 38 percent used skin-whitening chemicals.

The treatments–creams and soaps–fill the shelves of Hong Kong cosmetic stores. In Taiwan, whitening products accounted for as much as 35 percent of cosmetic store sales, according to a 2004 International Market Research Report conducted by Industry Canada.

How I Lightened My Skin Using Nur76 Skin Lightening