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.

I know a little girl named Sylvie. She's named after Sylvie Guillem, the dancer, so last night I took her and 4 other distinguished ladies to Sadlers Wells in London to see this:

The subject matter was gender - a topic dear to ballet dancers for some reason. I'm increasingly of the view that gender is not destiny, but that the unsexed human spirit makes its destiny and our externals are just that, externals. That's a conceit of course, but it's my conceit and I like it. A lot of Eonnagata was brutally slow for my attention span, let alone a young child's, but Sylvie endured and one day she'll astonish her children when she tells them that she saw the great Sylvie Guillem.