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It's whitening skin cream and pills to make your skin paler. How messed up is that? Maybe these kids need to live in downtown Detroit for a week. I'm sure they'd get the notion that white is better pounded right out of em.I was so bothered by this product that I even asked my Singaporean friend at work about it. I was hoping she could shed some light on the issue and make me understand some cultural difference that justified this whole thing. Nope.
Her response?
"Don't you know that white skin is considered more beautiful?"
Wrong answer.
My response: "So what about people who are born with naturally dark skin?"
"Well that's why they make the cream."
I could have screamed. I was angry. She chalked up my misunderstanding to the fact that Americans like to be tan and thus I didn't understand the desire to be pale. I wanted to go on a tangent about the Civil Rights movement and equality and all of that, but I was just too angry at Asia in general at that point.
Even though I'm trying to stay away from skin cancer triggers right now, it really made me want to go bake in the sun. It'd be my giant middle finger to the skin whitening people.
7 comments:
If pale is hot in Asia, you can call me the Brad Pitt of Asia!
You bake in that sun girl, for all of us Americans:-)
I'm naturally tanned, thus, naturally offended by this way of thinking, lol.
But it's expected, we have the same stuff here in Japan (Navy also), however they DO admire tan people (I'm brown skin, curly hair) and sometimes they stare in amazement of how "different" or "strange" i look, but maybe it's because they are surprised that I don't look like a monster?
I was a little bit taken aback by the ad too, though I think it's more of the wording than anything else... "perfect whitening INSIDE out".
So wrong!
I probably didn't react as much to it as you did because I know that being "fair" is the cultural preference here when it comes to prettiness, yeah.
It's for asians.You won't catch the drift.
Its a northeast asian thing, fair skin has always been considered desirable for hundreds of years, and you must admit, the ad is meant strictly as a skin whitener in Singapore, not in Compton etc. There's no racial overtones to it, and if we have to remove ads like that in Asia, I suggest we do it ONLY when hollywood STOPS portraying asian males as sexless demons and asian women as cheap hos dropping to their knees at the sight of any white lead or support.
Still, your social awareness has to be commended. In my days in college stateside, my white pals would have just laughed pretty hard at the ad while saying some nasty stuff against black guys as well, those were the days...Another reason why I'm glad to see Obama as prez, its actually gratifying!
You make a very good point. Hollywood does seem to portray Asians in a negative light. Thanks for sharing another point of view.
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