Who’s The Fairest Of Them All?

After a month in the sun in Australia over Christmas we all returned to Qatar with what my Grandma would have considered a healthy glow, Cancer Australia may have had called it something else. Unnecessary? Irresponsible? We wore heavy duty sun screen, but there were a couple of times we came home from the beach looking a little pink.

We have two children who have inherited G’s father’s warm coloring and two children who have my very white and prone to freckling Irish skin. Can I just throw in here that I also have Chinese heritage and as much as my grandmother was happy to pass on the thick hair and the almond brown eyes she couldn’t quite manage to share her flawless skin.

Although I’ve never been a tanning bed or a spray tan girl, I am a lover of a quick slather of tinted moisturizer. Something that just adds a bit of colour to my fluorescent white legs to stop me glowing in the dark. But it appears that I am alone in my quest to be brown in Qatar. A quick scan of the supermarket shelves made me realize I was swimming against the current, while the beauty industry screamed out a not so subtle message from the shelves.

Nivea want to give me a natural fairness.

NiveaWhiteness

Whereas Olay are going to give me an advanced fairness

Olaywhiteness

Ponds will provide me with a flawless white

PondsWhiteness

And Loreal will have me white perfect

LorealWhiteness

Garnier will wash my face fair with their fairness face-wash

GarnierWhiteness

And “Fair” & Lovely – the Daily Fairness Experts…

Fair&Lovely2

See the oh so subtleness of the unhappy brown version versus the look how much paler I am white version?

It is moments like these where I find myself baffled by the outrageous behaviour of the international giants of the beauty industry. How do you get away with this?  What gets said in the marketing meetings? “Put a happy light faced girl on the front and then a sadder, darker version behind her, that’ll work, that should do it.”

In a moment of naivety and perhaps in a futile search for an appropriate explanation I asked a shop assistant why these products were on the shelf.

“It’s better Ma’am, to be lighter.”

Fairness, flawless white.

It is far from fair, and it is very flawed.

 

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Comments

  1. Anne Dirilgen says

    It’s the same here in China where I live. I have even seen whitening cream for your vagina. Not a lie. Didn’t have my phone with me so couldn’t capture it.

  2. So no matter where you live, the beauty industry is manipulating you to be unhappy with your natural features. The pale want to be tan and the naturally darker want to be paler. Just another part of the body issues had by most women.

  3. Oh how I agree – the shelves in India are full of ‘skin whitening creams’ (which almost certainly don’t work) – and skin colour is mentioned in all those marriage ads. It’s so sad – there’s an industry working to make us dissatisfied with who we are.

    But – as one who has had a very minor skin cancer – the sun is lovely, but not worth playing with. At the risk of being preachy, sometimes it’s best for the fair-skinned to be pale and interesting than tanned.

    • Agreed. I try not to think too much about how burnt I let myself get as a child, but every summer I’d be peeling off layers of skin from my nose. These days we’re a 50+ family, but every now and again I fail dismally and discover where I’ve missed a spot 🙂

  4. Chris Gerakiteys says

    Man, I agree. I live in a country (Ghana) where most people have the most perfect, flawless (dark) skin, but whitening products are the norm! It’s crazy, why would anyone want my freckled, sun-damaged, wrinkly disaster, I’ll never know!

  5. noprizesfornormal says

    Marketing, advertising. Lowers the self esteem to create a desire that can never be achieved (and shouldn’t be). It’s all about selling stuff. Gotta love it.

  6. Www.chaiacupoflife.com says

    Its quite crazy, I live in India and can only find deodorant that gives me fresh but ‘fairer underarms’ ! Ive also seen a tv commercial for women’s cream to make them whiter ‘down below’.
    Hope you’re burn isn’t too bad, the sun in Australia is quite harsh!

    • Yes! I bought some deodorant in Dubai recently and it had something about white on it, I assumed it was one that didn’t leave white marks on your black clothing. No, on closer inspection it’s apparently it’s to make my underarms whiter!

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