Reply #29: It really bugs me when people attempt to equate these things

[Chovexani]

Skin bleaching != tanning. The two practices come from entirely different sets of neuroses born from entirely different contexts and expectations about beauty.

White people who choose to tan do so because looking like an Oompa Loompa suddenly became fashionable. That beauty trend comes and goes, and is honestly on its way out at the moment. Class issues do come into play with it to a certain extent; in the Victorian era, pale skin meant whites were idle rich and didn't have to work outside, now tans mean whites have enough disposable income to jet set to beaches and tan. But at the end of the day, it's an issue of vanity and aesthetics divorced from any kind of political pressure or consequence.

In contrast, some PoC use skin bleachers because it has been drilled into our heads that the white European standard of beauty is the only valid one so many times that some of us have sadly internalized that. Women of color have a certain dimension of politics to our beauty choices that white women never have to deal with (the only thing that comes close is the shaving debate--which women of color also deal with). No white person has ever had to endure anything other than teasing about being pale, or maybe sunburns. Whereas PoC have been indoctrinated almost since birth that in order to succeed in life you have to be as light as possible. We are bombarded in the media with images of almost entirely light-skinned women of color with European-looking features and told that this is the only way a woman of color is beautiful. Until Michelle Obama came along, all of the "it" black female celebs lauded as beautiful were light-skinned (Hallie, Thandie, etc. and this goes all the way back to Lena Horne for crying out loud). Hollywood is not alone, Bollywood is just as guilty. Dark skinned actresses struggle to get roles.

See also: "Good" hair vs "Bad" hair, passing, etc. And just about every ethnic group of color has wrestled with issues of colorism, exacerbated by colonialism. I'm not exactly Halle's complexion but I have had to deal with the "high yella" taunts since I was a child. This colorism is even encouraged and profited from by our modern-day colonialism called capitalism. Ask yourself why Unilever launched a "Real Beauty" campaign in the United States with ads that laud "real" women's bodies and diversity while simultaneously marketing a skin bleacher called "Fair and Lovely" in South Asia, with ads that play into every neurosis born of colorism in Indian culture. Search Fair and Lovely on YouTube and prepare to vomit. Similar ads in other countries, particularly in China and Japan, play on women's fears of being dark and therefore ugly.

For all of these reasons I just fucking hate when every discussion of skin bleaching and/or colorism among PoC gets derailed by talk of white people's tanning habits. They are not the same thing, at all.