Posted: Sun 31 Jul 2005 19:45 Post subject: Beauty and the Bleach
Apparently she's bought a "welder's helmet" for her daughter, so she can go out without catching the sun as well. Aaaaa isn't that just so thoughtful of her.
People have been using skin lightening creams for years and the black press is notorious for running advertisements for them. It's really sad.
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Lin-Cheng, whose skin now resembles a pink-white peony, said she gets compliments from her friends on her appearance.
"I know I cannot get there, but always, Nicole Kidman is my idol," she said.
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Lin-Cheng religiously reapplies baby sunblock every hour and takes the tinted visor that she calls her "welder's helmet" everywhere. She purchased the helmet on a recent trip to Taiwan and brought extras for "friends who want to be beautiful." She outfitted her daughter Jessica with one of the helmets, and the 22-year-old wore it daily on her walk from her apartment in Westwood to UCLA.
Sun, a plastic surgeon, started treating women for "pigmentation issues" in 1996 after clients asked him how they could lighten their skin and get rid of sun spots and dark patches. Sun said he now treats about 30 women a week.
"It's like botox," he said. "Do you think people in the past were interested in wrinkle improvement? Yes. Could they do something about it, though? [Women's] concerns and their wish for improvement can finally be met in the hands of specialists."
But the idea of Asian women obsessing over white skin troubles Glen Mimura, a 37-year-old assistant professor of Asian American studies at UC Irvine.
"It seems tied primarily to colonial history, a fascination with whiteness," he said. "Dark skin gets associated with manual labor, agrarian communities, being less cosmopolitan."
The pursuit of white skin is all the more troubling because it appears to reinforce long-held prejudices in East Asia against fellow Asians with darker skin, Mimura said. Given the cost of whitening regimens, he added, maintaining that perfect milky glow seems reserved for women who can afford it.
"I think these women see skin-whitening very much along the lines of buying a Louis Vuitton bag," he said.
Anna Park, an associate editor at Audrey, an Asian American women's lifestyle and beauty magazine based in Gardena, isn't so sure the whitening boom is about embracing European ideals of beauty.
"If you look at old pictures, old paintings of what is considered to be beautiful in Korea or Japan, all their faces are really pale," said Park, 35.
To understand how much of a phenomenon whitening has become in Asian American communities, step inside Rick Armstrong's tanning salon, Casa del Sol, in Irvine.
Armstrong has installed a sleek apparatus featuring a horseshoe-shaped mask that fits over a person's face. Instead of using light to brown skin, as other machines in his salon do, it uses light to smooth out wrinkles and lighten age spots.
"Over in Japan, they have salons with facial units in them and you put whitening gel on," Armstrong said. "You sit there and have a session."
He's betting the device will become popular with Asians as well as other customers who want to keep their faces smooth. "Nobody's face is perfect."
Just after I read this article - today I was in the bank. In Orange County California today it is about 88 to 92 degrees - or more. Not a cloud in the sky. Going in to the bank there is this Asian woman - I could tell she was Asian from behind by her build and extremely whitish yellowish legs.
She was walking in to the bank and she had a wool sweater draped over her head - curtaining it in front - like a tent. When she got inside she pulled it back but kept it on her head. It looked so weird.
Then when she got outside - she pulled it forward as though making a sort of protection from the sun.
I had never known of this phenomenon among Asian women but here today I saw this. It must have been the sun/color thing because why would someone have a sweater draped over her head in 92 degree sunny weather? And the sweater did not match her outfit.
I turned around and strained to see her face and sure enough, she was about one of the whitest pastiest looking women I have ever seen. (BTW how they could think that pasty look is attractive is beyond me - but to each his own.)
Weird I would see this just after reading this article.
Posted: Tue 29 May 2007 17:12 Post subject: Beauty and the Bleach
Personally I hate tans, the sun, and tanning beds. I prefer my naturally fair skin and try to keep it that way. It is better to avoid the sun if you want healthy skin...although the sun does provide vitamin D. Pale skin can be beautiful and I love mine...wish it were paler!
I'm not Asian but in Asia, this is nothing new. It is the same in South Asia if you'll notice the Bollywood actresses like Aishwarya Rai. She is a very pretty girl but looks more European than Indian. She has white skin and bright blue eyes. I believe she has European ancestry...Indians are Caucasoid anyway. In India, there is a caste system that revolves around color. It is slightly similar to what used to occur in black communities but worse. Men put stuff like this in the personals over there: "Handsome doctor seeks willowy, fair-complexioned wife who is beautiful". In parts of the Caribbean and on the African continent, many women ruin their skin with chemicals to look white or lighter than they are.
My ex-boyfriend's mother (she is black) hated my fair skin so much that she would make snide comments about it all the time. She was like a deep caramel bronze color but so insecure that she referred to herself as being "light-skinned". In family photos, the camera flash and her bleached hair makes her appear lighter than she is in person. I've known people who lighten their skin or hair or both to appear white or at least mixed. It is nuts!
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