Valikon kautta pääsee lukemaan paljonkin sekalaisia kirjoituksia, joita pitäisi korjailla tai muokata, mutta lukemaan myös mielenkiintoisia lainauksia tutkimuksista. Olen usein poiminut tutkimuksista yhden mielenkiintoisen kohdan, jonka takia tutkimukseen on jäänyt paljonkin mielenkiintoista tietoa, joista kylläkin osa on toistoa muista tutkimuksista koskien vaikka ihonväriä ja siitä aiheutuvia ongelmia.
Olin nähtävästi poiminut Living in a Barbie World: Skin Bleaching and the Preference for Fair Skin in India, Nigeria, and Thailand tutkimuksesta kohdan koskien Thaimaassa valittua eurasialaista missiä, jonka tutkija sanoo olevan ulkonäöltään kuin italialainen. Tämän naisen tapauksessa on nähtävästi tullut aika eurokeskinen ulkonäkö vaikka muutoin eurasialaiset ovat eurooppalaisen silmissä usein aika aasialaisen näköisiä ellei sitten osaa paremmin tunnistaa, jos vaikka on perehtynyt aasialaisten ulkonäköön, mutta toisaalta tunnistamista osaltaan vaikeuttavat Aasiassa ilmenevät kauneusleikkaukset, että osa aidoista itäaasialaisista voi näyttää eurasialaiselta.
The connection between whiteness, wealth, and modernity is reinforced through Thailand’s beauty pageants. Thailand’s Miss Universe contestants, ostensibly representing the most beautiful and refined that the country has to offer, manifest how Western and Northeast Asian beauty standards of fair skin and wide eyes have been diffused into Thailand’s national image of beauty. For example, with large eyes, high cheekbones, and fair skin with a pink undertone, Thailand’s 2012 Miss Universe contestant could easily be mistaken for Italian.
How half-white, biracial Thais fit into this colorist hierarchy has evolved somewhat over time. Independent researcher Walter Persaud writes that, until around the mid-1990s, Eurasian identity was considered undesirable and sometimes taboo, as half-white Thais were considered potentially illegitimate children of American soldiers on break from Vietnam. Today, however, “‘in the globalized epoch of diasporic nationalism, Eurasians have acquired a privileged place in Thailand, especially in the worlds of advertising and entertainment where Thai notions of beauty are being transformed,’” such that a half-White identity is not only accepted, but is in demand.
Lähde
Olen nyt poiminut tutkimuksesta lisää mielenkiintoisia kohtia vaikka valinta ei aina ole helppoa, jonka takia linkin kautta voi siirtyä suoraan lukemaan tutkimusta. Tässä tutkimuksessa tarkastellaan myös kahta maata, jotka tilastojen perusteella koskettavat monia suomalaisia perheitä, koska suomalaiset naiset pariutuvat paljonkin suurikokoisten nigerialaisten miesten kanssa ja suomalaiset miehet pariutuvat paljonkin pienten thainaisten kanssa.
Ylle poimin videon, jossa mainostetaan thaimaalaista Cute Press tuotetta, joka suojaa auringolta ja vaalentaa ihonväriä. Tuotemerkki mainittiin tutkimuksessa, mutta tässä voidaan taas nähdä erikoinen tilanne kuinka moni eurooppalainen nainen haluaa ruskettaa ja vanhentaa ihoaan auringossa, mutta Thaimaassa osaltaan median takia on enemmän muodissa vaalea ihonväri.
Tämä pitkä tutkimus pitäisi lukea uudelleen, mutta siinä tuodaan esille kuinka kolonialismilla on ollut vaikutusta, että valkoiset ovat olleet hierarkiassa ylempiä. Tässä ei ole sinänsä mitään uutta, mutta sitten kerrotaan myös kuinka vaaleammasta ihonväristä oltaisiin tykätty jo ennen länsimaalaisten tuloa varsinkin eliittiin kuuluvien keskuudessa. Kuitenkin lopulta tällä hetkellä medialla on suuri vaikutus kuinka varsinkin Thaimaassa ja Intiassa lehdet ovat yleisesti täynnä enemmän eurooppalaisen näköisiä naisia varsinkin ihonvärin osalta.
Onhan tämä valitettavaa, että median pitäisi varsinkin tuoda esille erilaista kauneutta, eikä suosia eurasialaisia tai muita vaaleampia, mutta karu tosi asia voi lopulta olla siinä, että ihmiset näkevät yleisemmin vaaleamman ihonvärin kauniina naisella vaikka eihän ihonväri lopulta tee kaunista vaan myös esim. kasvonpiirteet.
Ulkonäön osalta näyttää myös olevan sillä tavalla, että sattumoisin tutkijoiden näkökulmasta katsottuna enemmän eurokeskinen ulkonäkö miellyttää ihmisiä varsinkin nykypäivänä, kun ihmiset voivat paremmin verrata eri etnisten ryhmien ulkonäköä. Valitettavasti eivät ihmiset yleisesti pysty näkemään alkukantaisilta tai maskuliinisilta vaikuttavaa ulkonäköä kauniina naisella, jos ajatellaan vaikka Australian alkuasukkaita. Tämä on valitettavaa, mutta lopulta on tärkeintä, että alkuasukas miehet osaavat arvostaa naistensa ulkonäköä vaikkei kansainvälisissä missikilpailuissa naisille koskaan voittoa tulisi.
In recent years, Mattel’s signature product Barbie has expanded internationally, and is now sold in over 150 countries. Of course, the Barbie phenomenon is just one representation of the U.S.’ growing cultural and media influence around the world. While globalization certainly has its benefits, it also poses serious concerns. The self-image of Americans – women in particular – has arguably been compromised by U.S. popular culture’s unapologetically narrow image of beauty. What happens when that same image is exported to every corner of the globe? Specifically, what happens when a Eurocentric beauty standard of fairness, slenderness, narrow noses, and wide eyes is commercialized in the non-white, non-Western world?Lähde
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Seoul, one in five women has undergone cosmetic surgery. The majority of such surgeries are for eyelid lifts, with the goal of widening the eye to achieve a less Asian, more European look.
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Skin bleaching, also referred to as whitening or lightening, involves breaking down the top layer of skin with active ingredients such as hydroquinone, mercury, and corticosteroids to lighten the skin or impede the production of melanin. Globally, the skin lightening industry is expected to reach $10 billion by 2015. The largest market for skin lightening is in Asia, with African and Latin American countries also consuming high levels of skin bleach products.
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Some researchers assert that this global fascination with light skin already existed in many non-Western societies long before the existence of Western media, and before the beginning of the colonial era. Many point to the correlation of indoor labor with light skin and class privilege as a source of colorism around the world. This, as well as colorist undertones in India’s caste system or Nigeria’s pre-modern marriage rituals or Thailand’s traditional oral tales all suggest that the preference for fair skin may have long predated Western interference.
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A cursory glance at America’s celebrities of color conveys that colorism has survived into the 21st century and impacts who is considered beautiful in American society. On the 2011 Internet Movie Database (IMDb) list of the top 100 most beautiful female celebrities, celebrities of color included Halle Berry, Beyonce Knowles, Eva Longoria, Shakira, and Qi Shu. All the women listed possess relatively similar features – straight, long hair, thin noses, wide eyes, high cheekbones, and slim frames. The nonwhite women listed were notably lighter skin and had more European features than the average woman of their races.
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Indeed, female beauty is becoming an increasingly standardized quality throughout the world. A standard so strikingly white, Western, and wealthy it is tempting to conclude there must be a conspiracy afoot” ~ Wendy Chapkis
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Skin bleach companies often market their products as rejuvenating one’s “natural” fairness that the consumer had as an infant before the skin was “damaged” by the sun and the wear of everyday life.
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A 2002 study of adolescents in the northern province of Chaing Mai illustrates how modernity, popular culture, and white skin become conflated for many Thai youth. The study illustrates,
The girls often admired the beauty of the models and the fashions in the magazine . . . These models have westernized features or are Eurasian rather than Thai and the magazines included articles extolling the virtues of “corrective surgery,” skin lightening creams, and so on.
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A 2010 study found that young women in all four regions of the country marked a “shapely” figure as the most important physical characteristic, followed by having “bright face skin” and “white-pink skin.” This prioritization placed on “bright,” white skin was most emphasized in the southern region of Thailand, where women tend to have darker brown skin tones than those in the northern region and presumably perceive themselves as further from the beauty standard than lighter women of the North. Thus, this colorist hierarchy seems to be replicated on a local level between northern and southern Thai women. Additionally, the study found that Thai women associate white skin not just with beauty, but also with “high social status, selfconfidence, modernity, and better job opportunities. The perceived psychological and economic benefits of fair skin suggest that Thai women are noticing a system of colorist privilege that extends beyond simply who is considered attractive.
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The image of white-skinned Asians dominates advertisements in Thailand and contrasts sharply with the darker tanned skin of most Thai citizens. Like most advertisements in Thailand, ads for skin-lightening products typically feature “Asian women with glowing white skin, jet-black hair, and delicate, almond-shaped obsidian eyes.” Sociologist Evelyn Nakano Glenn notes that “the message in these ads is clear: It’s okay to be Asian as long as you’re the right kind of Asian.” In other words, while White Westerners are not the dominant face of beauty in Thailand, white skinned Northeast Asian and Eurasian women still reinforce the “white is right” complex that is common in much of Asia.
With the advertising industry’s fair-skinned image of female beauty comes a booming skin lightening industry in Thailand. By 2004, whitening lotions accounted for 60% of Thailand’s 1.6 billion dollar (Bt 47.2 billion) skin care market. Today, an estimated 58% of women in Thailand between the ages of 18-64 use skin-lightening products. Alongside multinational corporations, home-based manufacturers and local Thai companies are competing for a share of the skin bleach market. National brands include Oriental Princess’ “Advanced Whitening Complex” and Thailand’s largest cosmetic producer, Cute Press, which advertises its “White Beauty Body Lotion.”
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Of the nine 14-18 year old boys interviewed, 7 stated that they would rather marry a girl with a light complexion. One stated, “Darker girls I don’t like because it’s not, like, good. In India, nobody like dark colors. Because we are dark colors. We are also dark so we want only light. White and dark? Only light!” He went on to express the gendered expectations behind skin complexion, asserting, “Black for boys, white for girls.”
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Dark-skinned female infants are at a disproportionately high risk of infanticide, because their families know that these infants will one day require higher dowries. As described above, dark skin on an infant functions as a financial liability for the family. Brown baby boys are less at risk for infanticide, partly because “a darkskinned son is not so much of a liability to a middle-class family as a dark-skinned daughter, for he can easily acquire other socially desirable qualities.” In short, being both female and dark-skinned poses a doubly high financial burden for a family, and puts one at increased risk of infanticide.
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By 2000, there were over 30 fairness creams available to Indian consumers. One study found that more skin lightening products are sold in India than Coca-Cola. India’s 200 million dollar skin lightening industry is dominated by the British owned skin bleach company Fair & Lovely, which is infamous for its advertising strategies that overtly equate fair skin with self-worth, family pride, happiness, and life opportunity. One such television advertisement sets the following scene:
A young Indian woman and her father humbly walk into the Modern Beauty Company. The fair-complexioned female employee scoffs at the young woman for her brown skin. Her father returns home and concocts a fairness cream from all natural ingredients. After applying the cream and achieving flawless white skin, the woman strides back into the Modern Beauty Company with full confidence and is admired by the woman who had mocked her. A white male authority figure at the company gasps at her newfound beauty. Immediately after, she is shown elatedly strolling off of a plane and being met by paparazzi clamoring to photograph her. The commercial concludes with her proud father stroking her now-beautiful, white face that has brought the family success and happiness.
The commercial’s message is clear: fair skin will bring an otherwise average Indian girl fame, success, confidence, and the admiration of white men. Fair & Lovely claims that its products whiten skin dramatically in only 6 weeks, and whether this is factual or not, it appears that women around the world are buying that message. Fair & Lovely is marketed in 40 countries and claims a customer base of a whopping 27 million worldwide.
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Similar to Thailand and Nigeria, India’s celebrities and beauty pageant contestants provide an additional illustration of how colorism is manifested. Bollywood star and 1994 winner of the Miss World pageant Aishwarya Rai is often referred to as the World’s Most Beautiful Woman. With hazel-blue eyes, fair skin, brown hair, plump lips, and a slender frame, Rai provides an image of beauty for millions of South Asian women to look up to, yet she bears little resemblance to their natural phenotypes. Though achieving Rai’s European-esque physique is virtually impossible for the majority of Indian women, many try in vain to reach it, spending valuable portions of their incomes on beauty parlor visits and lightening creams.
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Advertisements for skin bleaching in SSA have adopted less overtly racist marketing strategies over time, yet the message remains the same: “lighter is better.” The early 1900s saw classic colonial-era advertisements for Pears Soap depicting benevolent white people cleaning dirty and savage black Africans.
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In a study of female secondary school students in Ibadan, Nigeria, Durosaro found that the girls perceived skin whitening as a route towards achieving a range of social and economic benefits. In addition to enticing men romantically, they believed bleach products would enable them to “enter into connection with high calibers, attain high social standard, become more successful in life, look fashionable, express positive self-concept and be able to compete well with their male counterparts.” Whether real or imagined, the perceived benefits of fair skin expand far beyond one’s appearance.
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Like in Thailand and India, colorism is reflected in the overrepresentation of light-complexioned models, actresses, and beauty pageant winners that Nigerians are exposed to. One does not need to look far to see that “women with lighter complexions are more often used to advertise a wide range of products including alcoholic beverages, toiletries, cosmetics, and clothing.” Famous Nigerian models and celebrities include Munachi Abii, Tonto Dikeh, and Omotola Jalade, all of whom have markedly lighter skin than average Nigerian women. Slightly darker celebrities such as Genevieve Nnaji, the face of Lux Soap, and singer Tiwa Savage provide skin tone diversity in the circle of famous Nigerian women, yet all have straightened hair or weave extensions, reinforcing a Eurocentric image of African beauty.
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Darego’s light caramel skin, straight hair, slim figure, and thin nose sparked debate in Nigeria regarding the possibility of national beauty standards being confronted with quite different international standards. Should Nigeria succumb to the West’s international definition of beauty in the spirit of global integration, or work to ensure that the next generation continues to value Nigerian women’s natural beauty?
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Whereas the Indians I interviewed openly admitted personal and societal preferences for fair skin, many Nigerian youth I corresponded with were hesitant to discuss Nigeria’s colorism and skin-lightening practices. One insisted that she personally had no color preference and that Nigerian society shows no real preference to fair skin. However, she also stated that lighterskinned women do receive social benefits and that she doesn’t mind that fair skin is considered more beautiful, because she believes that, 9 times out of 10, lighter women genuinely are more attractive.
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One common counterargument to the assertion that international beauty standards privilege lighter skin is the idea of tanning. Those who subscribe to this argument assert that there is no global bias towards whiteness. Rather, humans simply admire what they lack. After all, white women tan to darken their skin, just as women of color around the world lighten theirs. However, it is important to note that when white women achieve a real or artificial tan, they are not trying to change the way they are perceived racially. Hunter notes that the goal of tanning is “not to look half black or half Mexican. It is to look white with a tan.” Conversely, “Many women of color are trying to alter the way they’re perceived racially, such that people think, ‘maybe she’s half-white.’” White women can tan and still maintain the privileges attached to appearing white, while women of color often alter their bodies with the goal of buying themselves some of those same privileges.
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In April 2012, a British television show competition named 18-year-old Florence Colgate the most beautiful woman in Britain. Fair-skinned, blonde, blue-eyed Colgate has appeared on Good Morning America and in a variety of other media outlets that tout her as the scientific physical ideal. While her 2:1 facial symmetry may naturally appeal to humans across national borders, many around the world have also been socially primed to consider Colgate’s appearance beautiful. Scientific symmetry is only one factor influencing Western society’s perceptions of attractiveness. The media industry, and advertising in particular, wields enormous power over what many are taught to associate with the word “beauty” from a young age.
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The bodies deemed most worthy for emulation in 20th century America looked much like Marilyn Monroe: blonde hair, blue eyes, a slim nose, and unmistakably of European descent.
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Baumann reviewed 1,508 American advertisements and found that they prioritized fairness as an important factor in female beauty, across racial categories. He notes that American culture associates moral values with lightness and darkness, which has important implications for that which is considered beautiful. He writes,
Associations with whiteness or lightness include youth, innocence, purity, virginity, vulnerability, and delicacy. Associations with blackness or darkness include threat, aggression, virility, mystery, villainy, and danger. Lightness and darkness together compose a stable, clear, and well-known cultural dichotomy.
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Baumann quotes, “In Western Caucasian society, there seems to be a popular image of beautiful women as having a fair complexion, light eye color, and light hair color, in contrast to an ideal image of men as having darker features…. We have the ‘fair maiden,’ and the ‘tall, dark, and handsome’ gentleman.”
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How does this cultural bias towards female fairness effect American’s hair color preferences? Researchers Melissa Rich and Thomas Cash conducted a study of American media and the preference for blonde hair on women. Based on their sample, around 26.8% of white American women are blonde. Contrast this with the fact that 41% of women in Playboy magazine centerfolds are blonde. This overrepresentation of blondes in a popular men’s magazine suggests that blonde women serve as a sexual icon in American culture. Additionally, the image of blonde beauty seems to impact how women view themselves individually. Rich and Cash cite a 1992 study that found that while “22% of women sampled were natural blondes, 39% reported that they wished to be blonde.” Moreover, 84% of women in the sample “believed that men preferred blonde women. In reality, however, only 35% of the men preferred blonde women.”
Even Beyonce, named People Magazine’s most beautiful woman of 2012, has gradually transitioned from a dark brown hair color to blonde over the years, and her skin is occasionally lightened in advertisements through Photoshop. With this fixation on blonde hair, it seems that American women have internalized the idea that being blonde comes with disproportionately high social capital.
In short, there exists a social premium on light skin across races and on lightcolored hair. In part, this premium is a manifestation of white privilege. Regardless of one’s race, being closer to looking white accrues privileges tied to being white.
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But what about models and actresses of color, who are also represented in American advertisements? As noted in Chapter 1, popular American celebrities of color such as Zoe Saldana or Eva Longoria are not white, yet reflect physical traits that are widely associated with whiteness. Asian female celebrities often have relatively wide eyes, while their black counterparts have atypically thin noses and straight hair. The vast majority of brown and black female celebrities have noticeably lighter skin tones than the average women of their races. Margaret Hunter calls this phenomenon of including lightskinned women of color in advertisements an “illusion of inclusion.” The same essential model of beauty is being promoted, yet industries can congratulate themselves on diversifying their ad campaigns.
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Perhaps unexpected is the fact that magazines marketed to African-Americans, such as Jet, Ebony, and Essence, uphold this same “illusion of inclusion.” Of 96 Ebony covers from 2000-2008, 73 prominently feature black women, yet the women on 67 of those covers reflect a European image of beauty: straightened hair, light brown skin, thin noses, and large eyes. These magazines targeted to black consumers in the U.S. are important to analyze because they too are a form of Western media that has gone global, circulated in urban areas of SSA and the Caribbean.
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Western advertisements in Thailand that promoted fashion and beauty products in particular were most likely to employ globalized appeals, using Caucasian models, English wording, and Western aesthetic ideals. The popular women’s magazine Cosmopolitan, for example, publishes international editions around the world, and has published 29 monthly magazines tailored to Thailand over the past three years. On the covers of those 29 magazines, 23 of the women are racially white (or white-appearing), one is a light-complexioned black woman, and three are Asian. Of the Asian women, two reflected a European standard of beauty: rosy cheeks, pale white skin, wide eyes, and dyed brown hair. Of all 29 covers of Cosmopolitan’s recent Thai publications, not one model on the cover looked ethnically Thai.
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In “Melanin on the Margins: Advertising and the Cultural Politics of Fair/Light/White Beauty in India,” Parameswaran and Cardoza describe,
Almost all magazine and television advertisements produced in India feature light-skinned models. On browsing the pages of the dozen national and global glossy women’s magazines that target middle-class Indian consumers, even a casual reader would learn quickly that light skin color and flawless skin devoid of pores and blemishes define ideal feminine beauty.
Like in local magazine advertisements, the covers of Cosmopolitan’s Indian edition typically display Indian models and Bollywood actresses, though many appear to be racially white at first glance. All have long black or brown hair, fair, lightly tanned skin, slim figures, angular facial features, slim noses, plump lips, and high cheekbones.
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A 1986 study of the Human Relations Area Files concluded, “Of 51 ethnically diverse societies for which such information is available, ‘47 state a preference for the lighter end for the locally represented spectrum, though not necessarily for the lightest possible skin colors.’” How could it be that, of such diverse societies around the world, the vast majority demonstrate a preference for relatively fair skin tones?
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Colonialism in Nigeria lasted from 1900-1960. The British “came to northern Nigeria desirous of identifying and collaborating with a group of rulers representing a cultural and political entity that they deemed ‘civilized’ and sophisticated enough to be partners in the colonial project.” In the North, colonial administrators showed political preference to the Hausa Fulani, who they considered "members of a higher race distinct from the indigenous Negroid peasant population,” largely due to their slim, tall builds, fair skin, and finely arched noses.
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The vast majority of Bollywood actresses throughout the 20th century have reflected a relatively narrow image of beauty: bright (often hazel) eyes, fair skin, and long (often brown rather than black) hair. Since their inception in the 1950s, Indian beauty pageants, such as Femina Miss India and Miss India South, have reflected a similar standard of beauty. Even in Tamil Nadu – the southern state with some of India’s darkest skin tones, where I conducted my research – the winners of Miss Tamil Nadu and Miss Chennai (the state’s capital) have medium to fair skin on average.
In reviewing a variety of Indian magazines – included Femina (1959), New Woman (1996), and Outlook (1995) – I found the same homogeneity in the physiques of women portrayed: fair skin, bright eyes, long hair, and narrow frames. In popular culture magazines, women with medium and dark skin tones are generally only found in rare lifestyle articles about poverty, natural disasters, or village life.
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While many Nigerian actresses and magazine models are lighter-than-average, there is significantly more skin tone diversity in Nigerian media than that of India. Dark and medium skin tones are surprisingly represented in publications like Drum magazine’s Nigeria edition and fashion magazines like Bella Naija marketed to Nigeria’s middle class. However, while color diversity does exist, medium to light skin tones are still disproportionately represented in Nigerian media, particularly in music videos of popular rappers like P Square and D’Banj.
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Thailand’s contemporary image of female beauty and its validation of Eurocentric ideals can be observed in the country’s domestic fashion magazines. In 1954, Thai publishing giant Sri Siam Printing Press was founded, and now circulates popular women’s magazines, including Kwanruen Magazine (1968), Fashion Review (1982), and Fashion Bangkok Show (2003). The ubiquitous magazine image of pale white skin, wide eyes, a thin figure, and dyed brown hair noticeably contrasts with the phenotypes of everyday Thai citizens.
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Clearly, there existed some degree of bias towards fair skin in each case study long before the rise of Western media. However, this hypothesis argues that contemporary Western media is the force that took preexisting colorism and made it an overwhelming bias, to the point where 58%, 61%, and 77% of women in Thailand, India, and Nigeria respectively are enticed to use skin lightening products. After having studied the global skin-lightening phenomenon, Evelyn Nakano Glenn advocates this hypothesis. She writes,
This recent rise in the use of skin lighteners cannot be seen as simply a legacy of colonialism but rather is a consequence of the penetration of multinational capital and Western consumer culture. The practice therefore is likely to continue to increase as the influence of these forces grows.
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According to Asia Pacific specialist Otto von Feigenblatt, Thailand’s standard of beauty for women before the 1970s was “smooth light brown skin with a golden shine to it, about one meter sixty centimeters tall, strong small dark eyes, long dark straight hair, a small round nose, and a strong healthy complexion.”
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By the 1980s and 1990s, South Korea and Japan, and later China, had developed thriving markets exporting their cultural products, largely to consumer nations like Thailand in Southeast Asia. As these Northeast Asian media exports grew in popularity, so did the images of beauty they propagated. Today, the new image of the “Korean pretty” - complete with porcelain white skin, wide eyes, and rosebud lips - is hugely popular in Thailand.
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While contemporary foreign media appears to be the primary driving force behind colorism only in Thailand, its impact on Nigeria and India is still significant. In all three countries, Western media has intensified an important dimension of colorism. To be urban, English-speaking, light-skinned, and global is now collapsed into a singular image of progress and prosperity. As this image is propagated on billboards, television screens, and in the words of aunts and uncles, the drive for young women in the developing world to achieve this ideal of beautiful, fair modernity is increasing. In truth, we in 2013 are likely only beginning to see the impact that Western (and Northeast Asian) media will have on the preference for fair skin globally.
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In truth, this perception that light skin translates into economic advantage has much validity. With a global Gini coefficient of .893,263 the world’s distribution of wealth cleanly falls along racial lines. According to the 2007 World Distribution of Household Wealth survey, North America and Europe alone own 64% of global wealth and the developed Asia-Pacific countries (Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Australia, and New Zealand) own 24%. 264 India holds .9% of global wealth, Thailand .2%, and all of Africa a shockingly low 1%. For women in the developing world observing this regional distribution of global wealth, it is difficult to ignore the uncanny association of whiteness with class privilege.
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I write this thesis because I would rather my daughter not grow up in a world where she’ll be taught, as I was, to equate “lighter” with “better.” I write this thesis because I fear that this is just the beginning. As capitalist consumerism imbeds itself more deeply in traditional societies around the world, as popular media and the global wealth gap continue to privilege fair skin, the beauty hierarchy may become further entrenched.
Lähde
It is commonly believed by social scientists and lay public alike that the media impose arbitrary images of ideal female beauty on girls and women in our society, and force them to aspire to these artificial and arbitrary standards. Nothing could be further from the truth.Lähde
According to this claim, girls and women want to look like supermodels or actresses or pop idols because they are bombarded with images of these women. By implication, according to this view, girls and women will cease to want to look like them if the media would cease inundating them with such images, or else change the arbitrary standards of female beauty. This view has been promoted, among many others, by the former model turned feminist social activist Jean Kilbourne in her documentary film series Killing Us Softly.
