When a high school girl walks into a beauty store in Seoul, South Korea, she is immediately hit by a tidal wave of product advertisements promising her lighter, brighter skin. Creams, lotions, toners, washes, makeup... All of them are marketing to her insecurities. She looks at the airbrushed models on the posters and sighs, jealous of their milky complexions. Her stomach in knots, she glances down at her tanned arms and realizes that she had gone outside without sunscreen that day. Her mother was always warning her not to get too dark. “If you’re light, it’ll be easier to find a job when you’re older.” With that in the back of her mind, she picks out a lightening cream and gladly forks over her allowance without a second thought. In her culture,
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Dr. Aisha Phoenix from London acknowledges this in her article “Colorism and the Politics of Beauty”: “Many of those disadvantaged by colorism (focus on) trying to climb up the hierarchy through skin whitening and body modifications, rather than rejecting it altogether… some people of color seek to sustain its racist and colorist underpinnings” (Davis, Phoenix, par. 18). Basically, a lot of women of color prefer to try their best to blend into society and its pressures, instead of challenging it. They will do anything they can to achieve whiteness and acceptance, such as bleaching their skin. For those people, ridding themselves of their “blackness” is no big deal. Furthermore, in a Canadian study observing the self worth of South Asian-Canadian and European-Canadian girls, both groups showed a similar level of body satisfaction, making their race seem like not much of an issue upon first look. “All women feel psychological pressures to conform to beauty standards; these pressures make it difficult for anyone to feel beautiful enough. Hence, it is not surprising that both groups of women revealed comparable, yet only adequate, levels of body satisfaction” (Sahay, Piran, par. 18). That is not particularly surprising, as it’s common knowledge that every woman is faced with societal pressures of her own. Feeling bad about oneself is not unique to any one group of people. However, after looking more closely at the Canadian study, it’s apparent that there are, in fact, consequences to having darker skin. The study concludes that, “South Asian-Canadian women were found to idealize light skin and had significantly lower body satisfaction than did European-Canadian women” (Sahay, Piran, par. 22). Although it’s true that women of every color will have to deal with poor self esteem at some point or another, women with light skin will never have to face the prejudice and self hatred endured by
Dr. Aisha Phoenix from London acknowledges this in her article “Colorism and the Politics of Beauty”: “Many of those disadvantaged by colorism (focus on) trying to climb up the hierarchy through skin whitening and body modifications, rather than rejecting it altogether… some people of color seek to sustain its racist and colorist underpinnings” (Davis, Phoenix, par. 18). Basically, a lot of women of color prefer to try their best to blend into society and its pressures, instead of challenging it. They will do anything they can to achieve whiteness and acceptance, such as bleaching their skin. For those people, ridding themselves of their “blackness” is no big deal. Furthermore, in a Canadian study observing the self worth of South Asian-Canadian and European-Canadian girls, both groups showed a similar level of body satisfaction, making their race seem like not much of an issue upon first look. “All women feel psychological pressures to conform to beauty standards; these pressures make it difficult for anyone to feel beautiful enough. Hence, it is not surprising that both groups of women revealed comparable, yet only adequate, levels of body satisfaction” (Sahay, Piran, par. 18). That is not particularly surprising, as it’s common knowledge that every woman is faced with societal pressures of her own. Feeling bad about oneself is not unique to any one group of people. However, after looking more closely at the Canadian study, it’s apparent that there are, in fact, consequences to having darker skin. The study concludes that, “South Asian-Canadian women were found to idealize light skin and had significantly lower body satisfaction than did European-Canadian women” (Sahay, Piran, par. 22). Although it’s true that women of every color will have to deal with poor self esteem at some point or another, women with light skin will never have to face the prejudice and self hatred endured by