Is Commercial Offering Skin Whitening Racist?
It is interesting how there are companies marketing products for whiter skin to darker skinned people while countries with people with whiter skin promote tanning services to give customers darker skin. This may have less to do with racism and more do to with classism if that is even a word. In Korea people with whiter skin were thought more highly of because it meant they weren’t farmers working out in the fields all day thus from a higher social class. It could be the same rationale in Thailand. Are there any ROK Heads familiar with Thailand that can comment on this?
The video advert of a skin whitening pill in Thailand was denounced by many Internet users as racist for carrying the tagline ‘You just need to be white to win.’
After receiving widespread criticism, the maker of the ‘Snowz’ whitening pill removed the ad from YouTube and issued a public apology.
The advert featured a Thai actress attributing her success to her white skin. She added that her popularity will suffer if she loses her whiteness, thus explaining the need for her to use whitening products like Snowz.
The ad ends with the now infamous tagline ‘You just need to be white to win.’ [Global Voices]
You can read more at the link.
The company’s name is “Seoul Secret”. And they use Korean Hangeul as a key marketing point. Many Thai companies use Korean writings as a key selling point. The Korean writings on this Thai product have mistakenly linked to South Korea, and the Thai netizens are bashing the Koreans who have nothing to do with this commercial.
That stuff works really well.
My friend, DeShawn Washington uses it all the time.
…but I don’t think it changed his race.
http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2012/03/11/article-2113341-121DA92A000005DC-461_308x185.jpg
The racism of this does not bother me as much as the fact that the Asian women are being sold the bill of goods that being white is the key to success and that darker skin is somehow unnatural.
The notion that white is best has also infiltrated the Philippines where 95% of the women are of dark skin color. The whole idea that Filipino women can achieve white skin is ridiculous. A pill, a cream, a soap is NOT going to override genetics!
I believe that women with dark skin are especially beautiful. STOP THE SKIN WHITENING MOVEMENT NOW!!!!
Tagum City Tim, they all want to look like Korean kpop girls. Just go to Youtube, it’s just full of “how to do make up like a Korean girl”, or “how to look like a Korean girl”, etc.. thousands of videos on how to look Korean videos. Power of pop culture. Just like how Hollywood influences the beauty standards, South Korean pop culture is defining beauty standards in Asia.
Tyson – I believe the whole “white skin” beauty thing actually started in Japan with the Kabuki and Geisha girls but you are correct in that Kpop is dominating how women see themselves in Asia.
But isn’t it ironic, white women think brown skin is beautiful and brown skinned women think white skin is beautiful. I guess the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence holds true in this kind of situation.
The grass is always greener where you water it, right?
In some countries, even within the same ethnic group, complexion is also a seen as a class discriminator. Darker skin is associated with field laborers who have to work out in the sun. Lighter skin is associated with the upper class who have the means to avoid the hot tropical sun.
That being said, I know some Korean women who are naturally darker than the average Korean. They are full-blooded Korean, not multi-racial, and they don’t go to tanning salons. It’s their natural complexion. I don’t know how they are received in other parts of Korea, but when they hang out in the multi-national villes other Koreans find them exotic and ask them what country they are from.
“Is Commercial Offering Skin Whitening Racist?”
Everything is racist when whined about by a lazy, ignorant darkie.
The actual question should be, “Is Commercial Offering Skin Whitening Colorist?”
…as this is an issue of colorism rather than racism.
…and, yes, this is not a joke. Social scientists use the term colorism when studying pigmentocracies… in which those with lighter skin generally control the power and wealth within a race…
…except for pasty twitchy gingers who rank somewhere between Australian aborigines living around a muddy watering hole and rambling on about Dreamtime and New Guinea cannibals eating their dead grandfather’s genitals.