Since moving to Singapore a few things have been distinctively clear, Singapore is the cleanest city ever, the haze is infamous and the whiter your skin the better you are regarded.
That last one isn’t even just Singapore, it is all Asian countries, including India. Having lived in the UK but growing up within the Indian culture, I have always been aware of the colour of my skin, but not necessarily the shade of it until later in life. As I got older (particularly when I reached marriage age) it was considered a compliment to be called fair. Seriously it was a weird link like “oh she is fair, therefore she is pretty and suitable to marry my son.” I always found it fascinating, particularly when the older generation would associate a person’s worth and looks with their light skin. Mother's would believe odd Indian myths, like eating white fruits whilst pregnant or bathing their children in milk would lead to their child being fair. So for me this had always been an old-aged Indian attitude… until I moved.
It appears in Asia, everyone is striving to be as white as possible. White skin is what makes you beautiful, worthy, from better background. So much so that almost all cosmetics have some form of whitening chemical in it, and everyone stays out of the sun or walks around under umbrellas in UV clothing*. Adverts for whitening products seem to start in the same way, a person starting of as dark and “ugly” and transforming into this porcelain beauty following the use of some miraculous product. There was an awful advert doing the rounds, not too long ago, about a “dirty” black man being shoved in a washing machine and coming back out as a “clean” oriental man, that was aired in China (video below for those of you who can stomach it).
The interesting thing here is that those people who created these adverts aren’t necessarily being racist, they’re being classist, and appealing to the mass in their home countries. I’ll explain. This dates back to when people use to work in the rice fields outdoors in the blazing sun, and by default their skin would darken. As such they were considered poor or working class. The wealthier people would stay indoors in the shade, and avoid catching any colour.
This topic shows the clear variances between the West and East, with most Westerners going the polar opposite and chasing the sun, hoping for that holiday glow, or even fabricating it with many self-tan products or tanning beds. It’s almost like for the West, a tan is the sign of coming from a better class system, i.e. you can afford to holiday where there is sun.
The shade of your skin is so prevalent in India that dating websites have skin colour scales options from very fair, fair, wheat-ish, wheat-ish medium, wheat-ish dark, dark and very dark. Fair & Lovely, a whitening cream, is one of the best-selling skin creams in India, so much so that a male version called Fair & Handsome was launched last year.
Something that has often caught my attention is how in Indian clothing adverts, the models are always Caucasian, dressed up to look Indian. In India these days is it more common to see the faces of Caucasian men and women, glaring at you from billboards and magazine covers as trends show a cultural preference for fair skin in this heavily dominant brown-skinned country of a billion plus people. It has been said that Caucasian models are preferred because they tend to be less inhibited than their Indian competitors in terms of showing more skin or posing in swimwear or lingerie. In addition it gives the air of an international company, whilst also giving the perception that if a Caucasian person is wearing the brand it must be a successful brand. Again it plays on the idea that fairer people are from a better background and therefore their approval is considered of a higher calibre.
I have had Caucasian friends visit India, and come back either feeling completely intimidated because they were stared at everywhere they went, or loving life because they were treated like royalty. Either way, there is clearly a difference of treatment to a typical Indian person.
There are many different terms used for this across various media industries, but the most widely used and accepted phrase is “white-washing” mainly used in relation to Hollywood. There has been an increase in the use of high profile Caucasian actors to play historically ethnic characters. Example Scarlet Johansson playing the lead role in a magna adapted comic called Ghost in the Shell.
In Singapore there was recent uproar of the January issue of Nylon magazine, where British songwriter and singer MIA was on the front cover. It was evident that she was shades lighter than her natural skin tone and that the magazine editors had done a white wash on her. Given she has climbed the charts, become an overnight icon, won an Oscar, two Grammys and the Mercury Prize and has never needed any additional lightening, why was it required for a magazine, supposedly celebrating who she is?
Local friends in Singapore have even commented, that depending on the crowd they’re with at dinner they are treated different. When out with Caucasian friends, service is always better than if with other locals, and when with Indians often the service is so poor they have had to walk out of restaurants. I can’t say I have ever experienced this, however I have made the assumption that service in Singapore is relatively poor anyway (in comparison to the UK).
All across Asia, there is a clear bias towards fair skin and these thoughts are so deeply ingrained into society that the idea of quality is not even in the vision line. Whilst the West are slowly coming around to the idea that all ethnicities are beautiful, the East is still struggling with having an open conversation about this topic. Even Singapore, which is a multinational hub of different races, religions and cultures, the idea of beauty is still aimed towards fairer skin.
Despite significant modernisation developments in Asian countries, this reference, doesn’t appear to ever have been overcome. In fact it is considered the norm, where I have overheard conversations with those of darker skin openly accepting that as they are darker they are ugly, and ridicule themselves for it.
This is a topic that is a point of humour amongst Asians, and even in my own friends circle this conversation has occurred in jest. In fact I am myself a culprit of claiming that since I have moved to Singapore I have needed to upgrade to the darker emoji. Across the West, people are trying harder and harder to make race a non-issue (more prevalent in the Black and White communities rather than the Asian), therefore is speaking about colour in jest considered a step backwards?
In my opinion any conversation on this topic is a step forward, given most of society find it uncomfortable to discuss otherwise. Be it in jest or in a serious manner, discussing the outdated topic of classism in relation to colour and worthiness is a conversation that should be had. There appears to be a belief that if not discussed, these things do not exist. Brushing items like this under the carpet, doesn’t make them better, it just leads them to boil and erupt, completely out of control.
I look forward to the day I look at any popular magazine and see males and females of all ethnic persuasions embracing who they are, in the skin they are in, and being applauded for the universal beauty (as well as brains and brawn, as we all know beauty isn’t everything).
*Whilst many people do walk under umbrellas or in UV clothing, it should be noted that this also could be due to protection from skin cancer as well as the colouring of the skin and is a very real issue, that shouldn’t be shunned.
