I’ve just gotten back from Marrakech, where the temps reached into the 100s, F. I spent quite a lot of time lounging around the rather fabulous pool of the distinctly fabulous hotel, La Mamounia. I watched many a well-preserved European bikini’d body arch their backs towards the sun in order to tan.
Of course, the western vogue for toasting is not shared universally. When I was in Shanghai last summer, the analogous well-preserved woman was obsessed with keeping her skin far from the sun’s rays. Protection included a colorful parades of parasols, what I can only describe as “forearm cozies” – handmade fabric coverings protecting the skin from the elbow to the wrist — and for bicycle riders, what looked like a welding mask. (Although I think that also defended against road debris.)
In Asia, white is beautiful, and a seemingly without controversy.
From what I gather, this is a class or status-based issue than one that’s tainted with skin color-based racism that stains history here in the New World. (People of high castes were not manual laborers, ergo, not in the sun’s rays, ergo, tan=poor.) But it’s still startling nonetheless to encounter ads for Avon ClearWhite Supreme, Yves Saint Laurent’s White Mode line, Dior’s DiorSnowPure. And it’s startling to learn, as I did from Foreign Policy’s blog the other day, that Vaseline has just launched a Facebook app targeted at the Indian market that lets you lighten your skin on your profile picture.
It was also eye-opening when I visited downtown Melbourne, and stumbled across a display of blackface dolls, in the Block Arcade. They’re called “Golliwoggs”, and although a local I spoke to assured me that they were noncontroversial among Australians, a little digging revealed that they’re not completely benign there either. This shopkeeper evidently moved this display out of the window after a 2009 controversial blackface performance on an Australian variety show.
That backlash had its own backlash, as discomfort with these dolls was also seen as projection of American morals, history and shame on a land far far away. It’s an odd twist on the old argument against US cultural imperialism, although I wonder whether discomfort over racial stereotypes is really in the same category as, say, Hollywood’s global dominance.
In any event, the controversy faded as fast as a suntan in winter — when I visited in March 2010, the Golliwoggs were restored to full window display.
What’s really hilarious is the personal ads in India that have wants like “alibaster skin” or “thoroughly white face.” And since I’m in Mexico now, don’t even get me started on the white, blue-eyed talk show hosts. But maybe we westerners get suntanned because we all want what we don’t have already. Or we’re just yearning to be exotic…
Oh, and thanks a lot Alison for turning all our contextual Google ads into displays for skin-whitening and anti-aging creams! Big money in it obviously.
Ha, Tim — you know I’ll do anything for the Perceptive Travel cause, even if it means we’re pimping skin cream.
Thanks for this …err…perceptive post.
You’re right about the issue of skin color in Asia – it’s class-based rather than racial. Darker skin is equated to manual labor being baked by the relentless tropical sun. As in Australia, there might be some regions where dark-skinned ethnic groups are present, in which the prejudice is based on racial misconceptions.