This is a newspaper article I wrote a while back, but never got around to finding a publisher for.  What better place for it than my second ever blog post:

She’s fresh out of university, talented, and longs to be a journalist.  Yet she’s getting nowhere: “Just before my fourth interview, I realised that the obstacle to obtaining my dream job was my skin”.  Ten seconds into this television advertisement, many viewers might be able to identify with the plight of this young woman trying to overcome discrimination in the workplace.  One month later, however, she’s reporting live from a tent in the Egyptian desert and surrounded by admirers.  (See the video here).

Has she campaigned to draw attention to unfair recruitment procedures, or taken her employers to a labour tribunal?  Her solution is simpler: she has used a product by Indian cosmetics brand Fair and Lovely to lighten her skin and achieve “total fairness”.

And all over Asia, hundreds of thousands of women are listening to this message.  The young lady above might be from the Middle East, but this advert–and the story it tells–is one that resonates even more strongly further east, where Fair and Lovely’s core market lies.  There, skin whitening is a multi-billion dollar industry, with surveys estimating that between 40% and 60% of Asian women use these products.  In 2006, 226 new whitening products—moisturisers, cleansers, makeup, even deodorants—were introduced.

Some contain acids that remove old skin to reveal newer, lighter skin underneath, while others inhibit the production of melanin.  However, as has often been tragically clear in Africa as well, the health risks of skin whitening can be considerable.  The cheaper (and, often, more effective) the product, the greater the chance that it will contain harmful chemicals such as mercury and hydroquinone.   These can cause skin to become patchy, or lose its ability to produce pigment altogether.

Even more seriously, it is not only skin which is at risk.  According to CNN, mercury is so toxic that when used to make top hats in the 1800’s, the psychiatric problems it triggered in workers caused observers to coin the phrase “mad as a hatter.”  It is readily absorbed through the skin into the bloodstream, leading to poisoning of the central nervous system and kidneys.  Hydroquinone, banned here and in many other countries because of suspected links to cancer, is widespread and often legal in Asian countries.

But perhaps the biggest difference between skin whitening in Asia and in Africa is the general social acceptance of the phenomenon.  Virtually all of the large multinational beauty brands—Olay, Clinique, Ponds, L’Oreal, to name a few—aggressively market skin whitening versions of their products.  Cosmetics such as White Perfect, Snow UV, White Purity and Future White Day boasting ‘heat-sealed technology’ and ingredients such as liquorice extract are seemingly worlds away from R5 creams sold on the black market.  Critics have pointed out the irony in the fact that Fair and Lovely is owned by a subsidiary of Unilever, the company behind Dove and its ‘Campaign for Real Beauty’.

However, the belief that white skin is ‘purer’, ‘cleaner’ and more attractive is also deeply-rooted in many cultures in Asia.  A survey by Asia Market Intelligence, for example, has revealed that three quarters of Malaysian men thought their partners would be more attractive with lighter complexions.  Any visitor to the continent is familiar with the barrage of compliments handed out to light-skinned foreigners, and accustomed to seeing women covered from neck to ankles in layers of clothing—in many cases not for religious reasons, but to ward off a tan.  A saying in China has it that “one white covers up three flaws”.

On the one hand, Asia’s fascination with white skin is linked to its colonial history, when the complexions of European and Mongol invaders became the template for beauty.  Even more recently, Hollywood movies and the Western media have set a standard for attractiveness that has also accompanied an increase in hair colouring and  ‘double-eyelid surgery’, so popular in parts of East Asia.  And of course there is the advertising which show lighter-skinned women landing careers, boyfriends and social standing.

On the other hand, a love of white skin has a much longer history in Asia.  When asked why she uses whiteners, Liu Yisi, 16, from Beijing says “All our traditional heroines and figures from myths and legends are said to have had beautiful pure white skin.”  In Ancient China, those who could afford it swallowed powdered mother-of-pearl to whiten their skin, and the white faces of Japanese Geisha have long been iconic.

Many sociologists point out that white skin has noble and aristocratic connotations in Asia, much in the same way that societies in Europe for centuries prized skin untouched by the sun.  Dong Qing, 18, and also from China, feels “When people see women with flawless white skin, they assume that these women have the time and money to look after themselves and protect themselves and their families from the harsh summer sun. So it sends the message that you are refined and need not work long hours outside like the peasants have to do.”

For Japanese Yukako, 26, the explanation goes even deeper:  “although every Asian country I’ve visited has had different reasons for liking white skin, I feel all of these reasons stem from the same belief—that women should be hidden from public view and not out on the street.”

The irony, of course, is that as Asian women are trying to become lighter, Western women now lie for hours in tanning beds.  This has led some to feel that skin whiteners provide harmless fun, or even, in the case of one Indian economist, to argue that these products empower consumers by giving them ‘choice’ and ‘dignity’.  These, indeed, are often the arguments that the beauty companies themselves implicitly make.

Many others, however, are not convinced.  Skin whiteners do not give women real choice, they argue, because they do not get to the root of the problem.  This problem is not skin colour, but the discrimination and lack of real power that women face throughout the developing world.  As Thai journalist Nikki Assavathorn asks “isn’t it unnecessary and demeaning? Are we so self-loathing that we believe we will be deemed more attractive if we have a lighter shade of skin?”  As economies boom and disposable incomes continue to grow, this is an argument which looks to continue well into Asia’s future.