A
female
age
30-35,
anonymous
writes:One of my friends is asian and has recently started to lighten his skin, only by a couple of shades and he is also treating acne scars at the same time. The abuse he's got from doing this is unbelieveable, he's lost friends, received threats etc. However my friends who are white and who paint themselves orange with fake tan or spend hours under strong cancer-causing uv light to darken their skin a few shades get no abuse at all and it's seen as a good social thing they do together.Personally I wouldn't use chemicals to strip colour from my skin and I also wouldn't spend hours damaging my skin with uv light either. I don't really even think about my skin colour, I couldn't care less about it. So why do people do it? We're always told skin colour doesn't matter but it obviously does to a lot of people.
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female
reader, person12345  +, writes (13 June 2011):
 It's called white privilege. People who are white or light-skinned are given unfairly good treatment. Just like people who are male are given unfairly good treatment over women. And in parts of South America people who are of European descent are given unfairly good treatment over native-looking people. It's obviously a bad thing that this happens/that people feel a need to do this, but it explains why people lighten their skin. Whereas tan white people already possess said privilege and tanning does not decrease that.
A lot of this is linked to ideas of labor, in that in many Asian cultures having pale skin was a sign of being wealthy in that a person had the luxury to not work in the fields and not do physical labor. Whereas nowadays for people of European descent, being tan is a sign of having the luxury of being able to have outdoor leisure time or enough money to pay for a tan.
Skin color/race is an extremely complex issue, not just something people mess with for fun or because it's "cool." It's not something people mess with because it looks better, it's something exists due to a world that largely places Western European ideals as the only ideal. Of course there are exceptions to this, but it doesn't change the overall picture.
A
reader, anonymous, writes (13 June 2011): Humans are a stupid messed up species OP, that do insanely shit things and care about awfully menial crap.
It's about beauty and more specifically status and power.
In Asia having a dark skin tone marks you a lower class person, a pauper because it means you work out in the sun all day doing manual labour. So light skinned Asian people are deemed more beautiful because it signifies them having the wealth and status not to have to do that.
In Western countries with a more temperate climate having a tanned body means you can afford a lot of foreign holidays therefore must be rich (from the days before airplanes). Whereas we used to have the exact same thing as Asian countries except being pale and fat was considered the height of beauty, hence why you saw men wearing those flea infested wigs and painting their faces white. Being very obese was beautiful because it meant you afford to over eat, a rarity in those times.
OP we humans really are a stupid species, we do so much harm to ourselves just to look a certain way to fit in to a society and look like a carbon copy of everyone else, at the end of the day those people just look fake and uninspiring, but hey if it solves their crushing inane insecurities to look like a freak show reject then who am I to judge?
Japanese people are getting their eyes rounded to look more Western, because Western countries are rich and it's seen as the new beauty. Indians are having their skin bleached by very harmful procedures for the same reason, nose jobs to make their noses more western have increased, jaw line shaves all that shit. It really is ridiculous. You ever see those insane child paedo-fests (beauty pageants) they have in America? You see the crazy shit they do to make their kids beautiful and perform over there? Some have even started getting their kids nose jobs and stuff like that.
Fashion, jewelry, cars it's all the same shit. Status, power and competition OP.
If someone wants paint themselves up like an oompa loompa, stain all their clothes with a disgusting, streaky orange goop then let them off, it's not that much more stupid than irradiating your skin and risking cancer just to look good.
It's always been this way though OP, all throughout history humans have done stupid harmful crap to look good, corsets, lead based skin pastes, self mutilation, circumcision.
True beauty is being who you are, healthy and happy, being uniquely you with your unique skin tone and features. Variety is beauty OP. Variety is what makes this world a beautiful place, not hordes of bleached blonde, orange skinned women with fake tits.
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A
female
reader, anonymous, writes (13 June 2011): I am a darkskinned asian woman and I know what your Asian mate is going through. In Asian cultures, light skin is seen as superior, there a million dollar industries in india which cater to skin lightening and its socially acceptable to talk about wanting light skin and even bleach the skin to make it lighter.
When babies are born, the Aunts and Grandmothers will coo over the light skinned babies and say things like ' shes so beautiful and fair'. If the baby is dark then people say things like ' At least the baby is healthy even though it is dark'. Its always seen as something less to be dark than to be fair.
Its a misconception that white people are the cause of this type of thought. In fact, this belief that light skin is somehow better than fair skin is is a myth perpetuated by the Indian communities, who keep it alive to this very day.
I personally have dealt with this for over 30 years, unfortunatly I was one of the dark babies that grew up into a dark skinned kid, who became an unwanted dark skinned woman. Many of the men that my parents wanted me to marry (via arranged marriage) rejected me as I was 'too dark'. I left that community years ago and settled with a wonderful caucasian man who has never made my skin and issue, and has always said how beautiful it is.
Skin colour IS still an issue, but not so much because people are racist towards other people, but because they are racist towards people of their own colour.
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