Vaseline Launches Skin-Whitening Facebook India App

Ryokurin said:
Except the only people who want to be darker are largely white people, and lighter is pretty much everywhere else in the world where's there's people of color. It could be simply that they want to look like they don't have to do hard labor for a living, which is where the preference started or it could be something more.
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Well duh.

The hard labor argument has absolutely nothing to do with it, of that I am sure. Nobody thinks they should be darker or lighter so they don't get confused for labor workers.

It's all just a desire to look unique or "exotic" compared to what people are surrounded with. The human desire to feel unique is not unique.
 
This doesn't surprise me. I was in India last September and I saw various ads in different magazines about products that make the skin lighter.
 
Bgrngod said:
Well duh.

The hard labor argument has absolutely nothing to do with it, of that I am sure. Nobody thinks they should be darker or lighter so they don't get confused for labor workers.

It's all just a desire to look unique or "exotic" compared to what people are surrounded with. The human desire to feel unique is not unique.
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No, this is exactly the reason for it.

For thousands of years, the upper classes got to sit around indoors or under some nice shady trees while the peasants were out toiling in the fields getting dark tans. The end result is that people all over the world associate light skin with being wealthy and upper class, while dark skin is associated with being a penniless peasant.

It often has nothing to do with race, as you can see this in countries where everyone is basically the same race.
 
This is pretty hilarious to me since I know a whole bunch of Indian girls who try to lighten their skin.
 
If China allowed the use of Facebook, they would all go nuts for this app. Seriously. I went to the beach yesterday and saw women in full on home made wetsuit looking things with only holes for the mouth and eyes just sitting there in the sun. To what purpose I have no idea. The water is not at all cold, they just want to keep their skin as white as possible. Men who were not in the water were rubbing sand all over their bodies to keep the sun at bay. On the streets every sunny day you will see MANY people walking around with umbrellas to try and avoid the sun as well.

To me it is pretty sickening. I have seen some folks here who are so white they looked as if they were on their death bed. My Chinese friends think it is beautiful, to each their own.
 
meme said:
No, this is exactly the reason for it.

For thousands of years, the upper classes got to sit around indoors or under some nice shady trees while the peasants were out toiling in the fields getting dark tans. The end result is that people all over the world associate light skin with being wealthy and upper class, while dark skin is associated with being a penniless peasant.

It often has nothing to do with race, as you can see this in countries where everyone is basically the same race.
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Then why, here in the ol' US of A (one of the wealthiest countries in the world having some of the highest standards of living), do people spend so much time and effort trying to look darker (IE., tanned)?

I'm afraid the poster you are responding to has it - nothing to do with class, it's just the desire to look "exotic" compared to what surrounds you.
 
spinelli said:
To me it is pretty sickening. I have seen some folks here who are so white they looked as if they were on their death bed. My Chinese friends think it is beautiful, to each their own.
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I have Leucism so i:m even paler! bwahahahahaa!!
 
I am Indian and I am disgusted by this trend. People are very willing to spend on stuff to look good (equated as appearing ¡±fairer"), especially to endorse their urban, pseudo sophisticated lifestyle, yet ironically, this is just the opposite and reflects their shallowness.

They delude themselves into making caricatures of themselves.
Just masquerading to hide their true self. But then again, ain't everybody?
 
dderidex said:
Then why, here in the ol' US of A (one of the wealthiest countries in the world having some of the highest standards of living), do people spend so much time and effort trying to look darker (IE., tanned)?

I'm afraid the poster you are responding to has it - nothing to do with class, it's just the desire to look "exotic" compared to what surrounds you.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun_tanning

Throughout history, tanning has gone in and out of fashion. In many early civilizations, tanned skin was thought to be a matter of social class. Those whose skin was tan often spent long hours working in the sun, and were often grouped together as lower class.[4]

:snip:

In some other parts of the world, fair skin remains the standard of beauty. The geisha of Japan were renowned for their brilliant white painted faces, and the appeal of the bihaku (美白?), or "beautiful white", ideal leads many Japanese women to avoid any form of tanning.[11] There are exceptions to this, of course, with Japanese fashion trends such as ganguro emphasizing almost black skin. The color white is associated with purity and divinity in many Eastern religions. In India, dark skin is heavily associated with a lower class status, and some people resort to skin bleaching to achieve a skin color they view as more socially acceptable.[12] In Iran, being a woman or young girl with a suntan can land you in prison [13]
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Just because the counties where it's popular are amount the most wealthy does not mean that the thoughts there are what the rest of the world follows. Skin tone is like body style in the world. Not everyone in the world like stick thin and bronze skin.
 
Ryokurin said:
Just because the counties where it's popular are amount the most wealthy does not mean that the thoughts there are what the rest of the world follows. Skin tone is like body style in the world. Not everyone in the world like stick thin and bronze skin.
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But still ganguro girls are hawt.
 
badcaps said:
I've enjoyed watching this story ping pong around the web to the enraged confusion of liberals who aren't sure if they should condemn the "racism", or be culturally sensitive to the fact that skin lightening is as desirable to Indians as tanning is to Americans.
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Bgrngod said:
It's all just a desire to look unique or "exotic" compared to what people are surrounded with. The human desire to feel unique is not unique.
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Aren't those liberals cute? Anyway, white skin is preferred pretty much everywhere outside America and Europe, where things get complicated. As for those saying it's about uniqueness, that's not true. Most Japanese are already white to sort-of-white, and black is far much more unique, yet females there have been whitening their skins for ages, probably before they even came in contact with any Europeans.
 
quixotic said:
Most Japanese are already white to sort-of-white, and black is far much more unique, yet females there have been whitening their skins for ages, probably before they even came in contact with any Europeans.
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For women yes. For men no.
Skin lightening also helps with age spots, freckles and acne scars. And clear skin is something that Japanese womens strive for. But it's not usually teenagers that go for it.
 
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