Lately I've found myself perturbed by the increasing aggressiveness with which peddlers of skin-whitening products push their ware. For the benefit of anyone fortunate enough not to have seen any of this latest wave of commercials, the campaign consists of ads where the previously dark users of the product become so fair-skinned that even their good friends fail to recognize them. Print ads from the same company which appear semi-regularly in the pages of Inquirer Libre discuss the virtues of having white skin, going to far as to suggest that it improves one's chances of getting a job!
These ads make me sick.
I think it's safe to say that nowhere is our national self-loathing more evident than in the way our women try to alter the color of their skin. I know a lot of educated women don't fall for the garbage being peddled to them every time their favorite shows cut to commercial, but that there are those that still do really floors me.
There are so many dermatoligical products to sell that, while not necessarily helpful to one's self-esteem, at least have the decency to keep from eroding one's national pride. Products to remove pimples, old scars and all kinds of skin imperfections make fairly good sense, as do those that make skin "softer and smoother" as the tagline often goes, and I'm sure they could make the drug companies a lot of money.
It depresses me, though, that the product they seem to market most assiduously is their skin whitening cream, or soap, or whatever it is.
My wife is brown-skinned and beautiful for it, and though I wouldn't have it any other way, apparently she grew up thinking that her fair-skinned elder sister is better looking than she is, and that white skin is in and of itself a component of beauty. I still roll my eyes at the thought of it. It's funny how she only seems to really appreciate the beauty of her skin color only now.
I honestly don't have anything against fair-skinned girls; I went out with a few and even carried a torch for one for a long time (though it had nothing to do with her complexion), but I feel deeply perturbed by people who slavishly use products to alter their natural skin chemistry just to change the way they were at birth.
It's like every woman who does this to herself is a MICHAEL JACKSON of sorts.
3 comments:
white people try to get tan, and dark people try to get white.
the grass is always greener on the other side
Yes Ryan, white people always try to get me. Haha!
And Jim, the funny thing is, these products are the result of millions spent on product research and testing. Companies now invest in focus groups that tell them what kind of product they want to see. Thus, Surf has a calamansi variant (supposed to clean better with calamansi in it), Domex is thicker (thicker implies more dirt sticks to it), etc. Take it from me...if filipina women felt more strongly about having tanner skin, there'd be more products like that out on the market today.
Knowing that the product is on the market because of the existing demand among consumers kind of makes me feel even worse than the thought that ads are responsible, even though part of me already suspected as much.
Women aren't being tricked by advertisers, that much is true, but it can't be denied that the companies and their ads are helping perpetuate these insecurities.
I'm quite fond of this new "natural beauty" campaign that the folks at Dove and/or their ad agency came up with. It's an active attempt to enlighten people, or at least generate a sense of pride in who we are and what we are like.
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