I spent a weekend by the beach and am now quite tan. I went out and bought a whitening infusion mask pack. This was the first time I had ever bought or used such a product, or felt the inclination to do so. The fancy-shmancy packaging might have been a contributor, I don’t know.. Heheh.

But still, after using one and wondering if it made any difference*, I was thinking about why I actually tried it out. So, yeah, this post is kinda about the role of skin colour in the concept of beauty.. (the Yahoo Answers link in this post actually has tips for fairer skin, if that’s what you want..)

I looked it up and there are a bunch of questions on this on the Yahoo Answers thing, such as How to get fair skin? Thing is, lots of comments were from people saying “check your attitude, not your mirror”, “love who YOU are”, and similarly themed stuff.

Guess the desire to be fair is regarded by some as a kind of self-esteem problem? But beauty is only skin deep. Who you are has nothing to do with what you look like, right?

Personally, what I look like always surprises me. Sometimes when I look in a mirror in some shopping mall I even fail to recognize myself.

Stereotype me for a bit - Asian female, not very well-educated, desires fairer skin - probably has issues with ethic identity, might even regard the whole fair skin thing as some sort of status marker maybe? That’s racism even within the same racial group!

Nowadays, euphemisms of whitening lotions or luminosity boosters replace the Michael Jackson-esque term bleaching products. But the concept’s the same.

Blatant stereotyping continues:
Backward-thinking Asian girl, somewhat naive maybe, thinks looking fairer makes her look better. Does it really make her look better? And isn’t beauty in the eyes of the beholder?

A typical Asian with a geographically-limited social circle would likely agree that a fairer-skinned girl would be more attractive. And if that’s her world, her social-circle, who’s to argue with that? A paler Caucasian who thinks a “healthy” tan looks great is also molded by her own culture and experiences (doubtless experiences not related to skin cancer, heheh).

There’s no right or wrong, it just goes to show that different people have different perceptions of beauty. Physical traits have always been part of the construction of ideal beauty. Beauty is outward, beauty is shallow. Beauty is vain and beauty is for display.

Who you are on the inside, who you really really are, is a totally different matter.

I guess it doesn’t matter what you look like, or what you choose to look like, as long as you know who you are inside.

Vanity is not to be confused with pride.

So, back to my original musing.. I suppose I bought the whitening product just because I felt like it. Partly to see if it worked, and partly because I might look better fairer, but for the most part just because I wanted to. And I think I look fine with or without fairer skin anyways.

Dressing like a bimbo make you no less smart. It just confuses people more. And isn’t that more fun?

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* decided it was inconclusive, might be a placebo effect?