I'll always remember my first encounter with the strange politics of skin tone. It was my freshman year in college and a number of my dorm friends where outside in the sunshine except for George, who wouldn't come out of the shade of the building. I asked him what he was doing and he replied that he wanted to keep out of the sun. Nothing particularly strange about that except that George was black. He didn't want to get darker. Even then, the implications of what he said flooded my mind--blacks don't like black.
Yet its not just American blacks, with their complicated cultural history. Every culture in the world that has significant variations in skin tone its a case of whiter is better. Japanese women use a whitening foundation cream on their faces, Mexican TV always features European-looking Latinos and Indians sell sunblock as a beauty aid.
One of the most famous actors in Bollywood, Shahrukh Khan, and I mean really, really, really famous, sort of a cross between Brad Pitt, Richard Gere, George Clooney, and Johnny Depp rolled into one, endorses a skin lightening product called Fair and Handsome on television, magazine, and billboard ads throughout India. Not skin lightening to get rid of brown spots but to make skin lighter and whiter. Check out www.fairandhandsome.net/yourface.jsp and you’ll see what I mean.When I was in India last year one of the ads I saw had Shahrukh Khan telling a lonely, unattached man that the way to get a girl was to use the skin-whitening cream he was pitching. If this lonely man had lighter skin he would get the girl of his dreams. Can you imagine? If you’re “white” enough you’ll find love!
Both my wife and eldest son have Latino coloring, but the lovely bunny has her Scots-Irish father's features while my son has blue eyes. They both get a ridiculous amount of stares when visiting Mexico.
There have been several books written on 'colorism' but I dismiss the idea that its a form of racism, but rather such a social expression of an evolutionary imperative--to get out of the shallow end of the gene pool. If you're surrounded by blondes, the dark-eyed, dark-haired girl is remarkably attractive and vice-versa. We're simply genetically programmed to seek the exotic.
