BS: How disturbed should I be?

Subject: BS: How disturbed should I be?
From: DMcG
Date: 25 Jul 15 - 12:33 PM

My son married a girl from Mauritius last year, so my wife and I went across there a week or two ago and had a great time, lovely family, etc, etc.

We went out to a shopping mall with some of them and amongst the beauty products I noticed a "Skin Whitening Facial Kit" and it left me with very conflicted feelings. On the one hand, it is their culture, not mine; and anyway there are plenty of attitudes to beauty in Europe and the US that I dislike. On the other, it reminds me very strongly of some of the attitudes directed the US civil rights movement fought long and hard to get rid of.

And there is always the awareness that feeling offended on someone else's behalf when they aren't offended is a bit suspect.

How would others feel on seeing that?

Subject: RE: BS: How disturbed should I be?
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 25 Jul 15 - 12:38 PM

Well, you can buy horrible things everywhere I suppose. Last time I looked, there was a shop in Exeter selling legal highs. People are dying.

Subject: RE: BS: How disturbed should I be?
From: GUEST, ^*^
Date: 25 Jul 15 - 12:42 PM

Not your circus, not your monkeys.

Skin color, shades of pigment, lightening, passing, hair straightening, and much more, they're all topics that are probably best left to the cultures that are negotiating those paths. You may not like the idea that people feel they have to take these measures, but you're writing from a position of white privilege, no matter how well-meaning your intentions.

Subject: RE: BS: How disturbed should I be?
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 25 Jul 15 - 12:47 PM

Well I think it a fair question to ask.

Subject: RE: BS: How disturbed should I be?
From: Smedley
Date: 25 Jul 15 - 12:50 PM

This type of product is big business all over India as well.

Beauty magazines in East Asia regularly feature plastic surgery designed to give women 'less oriental' and 'more Western' appearances.

There is considerable debate in Africa right now about the pros and cons of hair-straightening techniques and 'cosmetics'. (Interesting piece on this recently on the BBC News website.)

In other words, across the globe, bodily appearance is highly political and deeply bound up with the politics of race and ethnicity.

Subject: RE: BS: How disturbed should I be?
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 25 Jul 15 - 01:03 PM

It's all tied up with the worst, most cynical and exploitative aspects of capitalism. The beauty industry is one of the biggest cons on the planet. Just walk round the aisles in Boots and see shelf after shelf of expensive, differently-perfumed greases and sprays then nip into the newsagent and take a look at all the airbrushed beauties adorning the covers of countless women's magazines. It's doesn't natter how useless, or worse, a product is; there's always someone trying to rip you off by flogging it to you, as long as it isn't actually illegal.

Subject: RE: BS: How disturbed should I be?
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 25 Jul 15 - 01:04 PM

Does it matter if I natter?

Subject: RE: BS: How disturbed should I be?
From: DMcG
Date: 25 Jul 15 - 01:16 PM

Agreed Steve, but if it was only that, it wouldn't be so bad. Conning people out of their money is one thing, but this is also inculcating - along with those magazines, Bollywood films, and so on - the idea than non-white is inherently inferior to white, which is that racial politics Smedley was referring to.

Subject: RE: BS: How disturbed should I be?
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 25 Jul 15 - 01:32 PM

True.

Subject: RE: BS: How disturbed should I be?
From: Don Firth
Date: 25 Jul 15 - 01:56 PM

One of the most beautiful women I have ever met was a co-worker when I put in a stint working as an operator for the telephone company in the 1980s. She was as bright as a button, with a sweet personality. Physically she was small in stature, maybe 5'3" or so, had a nice figure, had delicate features, and was of African-American ancestry. Her name was Rosetta.

Part of her overall beauty was the color of her skin—like rich milk-chocolate.

Perfect as is.

Don Firth

Subject: RE: BS: How disturbed should I be?
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 25 Jul 15 - 02:14 PM

But was she happy with it, Don? It's the fact that there is so much of a market for these products among young women who wish their pigmentation were other which is so distressing. And if it were not so, the products would have no market.

≈M≈

Subject: RE: BS: How disturbed should I be?
From: Ebbie
Date: 25 Jul 15 - 02:47 PM

It is wide-spread.

I make music with a woman from Saipan. She prides herself on the shade of her color, probably best described as 'nut-brown'. Her siblings, she says, were all darker than she. She attributes her own color to the fact that her mother rubbed coconut oil onto her body and into her hair.

She sings a song that says: 'You don't love me because I am too black.'

Then, of course, pale people lie in the sun or spend hours per year cooking in tanning salons to try to achieve what others come by naturally who try to lighten their skin to match those pale ones who are lying in the sun to darken their skin to match those who come by it naturally... etc, etc.

Subject: RE: BS: How disturbed should I be?
From: GUEST,Guest from Sanity
Date: 25 Jul 15 - 03:00 PM

How dare one want to lighten your skin to not look 'darker'......and then dye your hair, Aryan blonde!!...and then how about those African/American babes who are black...with dyed blonde hair???

Get over it, clowns will be clowns.

GfS

P.S. Elvis was originally blond....Michael Jackson was originally black ....Bruce Jenner liked being on a Wheaties box so much, that he decided to BE a Weenie Box!

Subject: RE: BS: How disturbed should I be?
From: Don Firth
Date: 25 Jul 15 - 03:47 PM

MGM, I believe Rosetta was content with her appearance as it was. Not egotistical, but content. I talked with her a lot over coffee in the break room at work, and she was just an all-around bright and intelligent person who seemed to be quite happy with who and what she was, without being egotistical. Part of her beauty was her pleasant personality.

Ebbie makes a good point. How about white people who roast themselves on the beach in their back yards, or spend time and money in tanning salons, risking skin cancer to alter their fish-belly white complexions?

Funny bit: back in the mists of antiquity, when I was at scout camp one summer, there was a kid who went around without a shirt whenever he could because he envied the tan of another kid at camp. The other kid snickered to me one afternoon that "He doesn't know it, but I'm full-blooded Tulalip Indian. Do you think I ought to tell him?"

Don Firth

Subject: RE: BS: How disturbed should I be?
From: GUEST,Stim
Date: 25 Jul 15 - 04:33 PM

A bit late to get upset about cosmetics of any sort--they seem to have been with us from the beginnings of civilization(or before, depending on your definition of civilization)--and skin whiteners seem to have been in common use for the last 5000 or so years.

Given that, I understand your sentiments, because there are many things that I see at the Mall that disturb me, Cinnabons being a prime example...

Subject: RE: BS: How disturbed should I be?
From: DMcG
Date: 25 Jul 15 - 04:46 PM

I disagree stim. Cosmetics are in essence about concealing things perceived as flaws, or to enhance features. So the problem here is the natural skin colour is being regarded as a flaw.

Tans are complex andhave at times been fashionable and unfashionable but in general have always been associated with wealth. That puts them in a different position to skin whiteners.

Subject: RE: BS: How disturbed should I be?
From: Ebbie
Date: 25 Jul 15 - 04:52 PM

African people who straighten their hair or bleach their hair to any color whatever are no stranger than pale people who curl theirs or dye their hair any color whatever.

Subject: RE: BS: How disturbed should I be?
From: GUEST
Date: 25 Jul 15 - 05:03 PM

Tans are complex and have at times been fashionable and unfashionable but in general have always been associated with wealth.

They have also been associated with peasants working long hours outdoors, and fair skin with higher social classes abelt o spend more time in the shade. I am thinking of western Europe, but I suspect it may have been similar in other places, including northern India. Are some skin lightening products related to that sort of thing ?

Subject: RE: BS: How disturbed should I be?
From: Manitas_at_home
Date: 25 Jul 15 - 05:14 PM

It was my understanding that the Western desire for sun tans came from Coco Chanel in the 1920's.

Subject: RE: BS: How disturbed should I be?
From: GUEST,Stim
Date: 25 Jul 15 - 05:30 PM

Not sure what you disagree with. I merely pointed out the fact that cosmetics have been used for a long, long, time.

The Chinese and the Greeks are documented to have used whiteners in several of the millennia before the common era. Actually, tanned skinned has tended to be associated with the laboring classes, and, in some times and places, at least, the wealthy inclined toward the more pallid look to emphasize that distinction.

I have a very different view than you do-I think it is good that we have the power to change the way that we look and the way that people perceive us--

Subject: RE: BS: How disturbed should I be?
From: GUEST,Stim
Date: 25 Jul 15 - 05:32 PM

And also the way we feel about ourselves

Subject: RE: BS: How disturbed should I be?
From: GUEST,Olddude
Date: 25 Jul 15 - 05:34 PM

Women forever used products to fade age spots or rosatia or whatever it's called. I suspect it is used that way not to change your race... Are you sure it is not like that and you mistakenly saw it wrong

Subject: RE: BS: How disturbed should I be?
From: DMcG
Date: 25 Jul 15 - 06:04 PM

I have a photograph of the box because it was in the window but didn't buy any so I can't be 100% certain. But I am close to it.

Subject: RE: BS: How disturbed should I be?
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 25 Jul 15 - 06:07 PM

Unfortunately, the way we feel about ourselves is manipulated, to great effect and massive profit, by the beauty industry. Every image you see in ads or or magazine covers is intended to make us feel flawed and that we must spend a good deal of money on "beauty products" in order for us to chase that ever-elusive, airbrushed perfection.

Subject: RE: BS: How disturbed should I be?
From: GUEST,Stim
Date: 25 Jul 15 - 07:17 PM

Do the ads and magazine covers have that effect on you, Steve? I wouldn't have guessed that about you...

The way that people feel about themselves is mostly regulated by the people around them. Whatever they may see in magazines, on TV, or in the movies, they tend to try fit in . Teachers dress like other teachers, bankers like other bankers. The beauty/fashion industry is there to make that possible, but most people don't try to recreate the high fashion stuff in their own lives.

Subject: RE: BS: How disturbed should I be?
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 25 Jul 15 - 07:29 PM

I don't know what you're on about. I was a teacher for 25 years and all the teachers around me were rugged individualists in the way they dressed, etc. I am not suggesting that people are encouraged to follow high fashion, whatever that is. But I am suggesting that we have a beauty industry that is very lucrative, largely because it plays on people's gullibilities and insecurities, and it does its damnedest to make sure that we feel so inadequate that we simply must spend a fortune on their useless products. As for me personally, nothing I see in the media or smell in Boots has the slightest effect on me. Give me a pot of swarfega and some grade 40 sandpaper and I'll come up as sweet as a baby's bum every time, I assure you.

Subject: RE: BS: How disturbed should I be?
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 25 Jul 15 - 07:43 PM

It's a pretty stupid sort of product, in the same way ultra high heels are. There's no reason you shouldn't believe that, but there's nothing you can do about it. Well I suppose if your daughter in law or son brings it up it'd be fair to share your thinking.

The world is full of sensible people doing stupid things.

Subject: RE: BS: How disturbed should I be?
From: DMcG
Date: 26 Jul 15 - 03:01 AM

Thanks for you thoughts, all

Those of you who have been around a while will remember Azizi, who seems to have last posted in November 2014 who usually had strong views on racial matters; I feel her side is under represented
Apart from that, I think we've covered all the essentials.

Subject: RE: BS: How disturbed should I be?
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 26 Jul 15 - 03:24 AM

"I don't know what you're on about. I was a teacher for 25 years and all the teachers around me were rugged individualists in the way they dressed, etc"
.,,.

Really, Steve? Well, I was one for 30 and my impressions are quite other. Summed up, I think, by a cartoon that appeared once in 'The Teacher' newspaper of which I own the original [my first wife was Features Editor and got to keep the cartoons they published, which just got thrown away otherwise!]. Two boys dressed in the then height of teenage fashion are walking past the staffroom door. A teacher emerging thence, in a three-piece suit, bespectacled, moustached, carrying a briefcase, smoking a pipe (this was then!), says to the colleagues around him, "Isn't it odd how they can never shake off the influence of their peer-group!" Every one of the colleagues is wearing spectacles and a three-piece suit, and carrying a briefcase, and smoking a pipe, and has a moustache...

≈M≈

Subject: RE: BS: How disturbed should I be?
From: Backwoodsman
Date: 26 Jul 15 - 03:43 AM

When I was at (a boys' grammar) school in the late '50s/early '60s, shapeless tweedy jackets with leather patches on the elbows, collar and cuffs, and baggy pleated-front flannels were de rigeur in the staff-room.

Subject: RE: BS: How disturbed should I be?
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 26 Jul 15 - 03:57 AM

Indeed. The two options were the threadbare suit or the patchy tweed jacket with flannels or corduroys. Always with a tie. (At the end of my first week of teaching in 1958, I set my form to write an essay on their first week. Surprising what they had noticed; one boy wrote of me "Our form teacher wears a different tie every day", which I took as a comment on my colleagues' sartorial habits.)

≈M≈

Subject: RE: BS: How disturbed should I be?
From: GUEST
Date: 26 Jul 15 - 09:35 PM

skin lightening ? - we live in a world where anus bleaching and vaginal lip reduction are desirable expensive cosmetic treatments....

Subject: RE: BS: How disturbed should I be?
From: Ebbie
Date: 27 Jul 15 - 02:14 AM

Really? You must live in a different universe from mine.

Subject: RE: BS: How disturbed should I be?
From: Backwoodsman
Date: 27 Jul 15 - 02:21 AM

Mine too.

Subject: RE: BS: How disturbed should I be?
From: GUEST,Shimrod
Date: 27 Jul 15 - 02:51 AM

Years ago, I worked with a young Scottish woman. She had the archetypal 'Celtic' pale skin and red hair. She was an independently minded person but she did wear make-up, though - most of the time. Occasionally - probably as a result of getting out of bed late - she would turn up at work with no make-up on. Christ! On those days she was 'sex-on-legs'!

I never mentioned it, though, because, knowing her, I would probably have received a 'Glasgow kiss'!

Subject: RE: BS: How disturbed should I be?
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 27 Jul 15 - 03:08 AM

You should be disturbed.

Skin whiteners are mostly toxic, and the pressure on Afrikans to whiten is a spinoff of racism. I was not aware of this until recently, having lazily assumed that one was either "white" or "black" but it was carefully explained to me by my current G/f - who says of herself "You don't get much blacker than me" - and was a runner up Miss Nigeria in the early 80s. She was talked into entering by friends for a laugh and found that there was a bigger prejudice against darker skins than even she had imagined.

The "norm" of lighter skin being "more beautiful" is racist and prejudicial.

Interestingly, the prejudice that had for years held sway, expressed by the fearful question "Does my bum look big in this?" (probably, I imagine, flowing from institutional paedophilia) seems to be fading, and many women are now proud of (again a quote and not my coinage) "A fine Afrikan arse".

Subject: RE: BS: How disturbed should I be?
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 27 Jul 15 - 04:05 AM

Oh, dear! It keeps happening. Having, not 5 minutes since, yet again crossed swords with that egregiously truculent and frequently unmannerly Mr Bridge on another thread, I find a post of his here which I regard as admirable and praiseworthy.

Woe alas! Life is never simple...

≈M≈

Subject: RE: BS: How disturbed should I be?
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 27 Jul 15 - 04:22 AM

Let's make the truce temporary, eh?

Subject: RE: BS: How disturbed should I be?
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 27 Jul 15 - 05:19 AM

Yay. What's life without a bit of grit in the engine!

☠✌☠

Subject: RE: BS: How disturbed should I be?
From: GUEST
Date: 27 Jul 15 - 07:55 AM

I don'tthink it's so much about racism as it is about companies making a buck. All products are developed so they can be sold to people who 'buy into' the latest fashion craze. We've seen this for decades with breast enlargements, lip enhancements, hair dyes, etc. It's not new. The companies for sure capitalize on people's stupidities, and advertizers do know their business. In short, racism can be the result, but it's not the cause.

Subject: RE: BS: How disturbed should I be?
From: DMcG
Date: 27 Jul 15 - 01:09 PM

I follow your argument, Guest, but I think it is a bit more subtle than that. Agreed, the motivation is profit rather than racism. But I think any advertisement for this product is going to boil down to 'White skin is better', which I would claim promotes racism. SO while the motivation may not be racist, the effect is.

Subject: RE: BS: How disturbed should I be?
From: Greg F.
Date: 27 Jul 15 - 01:30 PM

I don't think it's so much about racism as it is about companies making a buck.

Almost. Its companies using racism in order to make a buck.

Subject: RE: BS: How disturbed should I be?
From: GUEST
Date: 27 Jul 15 - 01:34 PM

I agree with you both.

Subject: RE: BS: How disturbed should I be?
From: wysiwyg
Date: 27 Jul 15 - 04:32 PM

Love the person as presented and let time bring the mutual questions. Your ways probably seem (are) a little strange to strangers, too.

Subject: RE: BS: How disturbed should I be?
From: Mr Red
Date: 28 Jul 15 - 03:08 AM

The skin whitening cream is a fashion. Dark skin denotes pleb, a worker, skivvy, poor. Those wot labour in the sun. White skin means you can stay indoors and endulge in rich-mans' peccadilloes. Ergo, white is rich (looking).

Plenty of Europeans toast their skin on the beaches of Mauritius, and how much of a gamble is that? The skin whitening creams are not that medically benign either.

It is like all fashions, excepting ergonomics which never grows large nor survives the marketing bastardization. Fashion is in the mind, the body must follow. Stiletto heels, body piercing, corsets, dreadlocks; how easy do they make life? But they make some people feel good about themselves, until the years pay them back.

One has to say that the Folk world fashions show a lot more relaxed and functional choices. Makeup in a tent on a rainy day just isn't practical.

But then there is Morris!

Subject: RE: BS: How disturbed should I be?
From: GUEST
Date: 28 Jul 15 - 08:26 AM

I think you need to make the case that there is a racial aspect strong enough to negate the thought that being offended on someone else's behalf when they aren't offended is a bit suspect.

As you said, it's their culture, not yours. It could come over as being patronising. But I think you know that.

Subject: RE: BS: How disturbed should I be?
From: DMcG
Date: 28 Jul 15 - 09:34 AM

Indeed so

Subject: RE: BS: How disturbed should I be?
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 28 Jul 15 - 01:00 PM

Well, not really Guest 0826 Mudcat time. As I thought I explained, my G/F is very black and quite accustomed (and very opposed) to the greater favour shown by Afrikans towards Afrikans with paler skins and straighter hair. It is a discrimination on the basis of colour and racial characteristics, and it is the engine room of many toxic chemicals and harmful practices. People are harming themselves trying to look more white because they are indoctrinated, ignorant of the consequences, and more concerned for social advantage than health. It should not be so.

Subject: RE: BS: How disturbed should I be?
From: GUEST,0826
Date: 28 Jul 15 - 01:37 PM

I was addressing the OP really Richard. Yours was about the only post with some input from non-white folks.

I have seen ads in the classified section of mags with a professional readership where Asian men are seeking to meet professional Asian women 'with light complexion' for serious relationships. Most of the professional people from northern India I have met do have light complexions. I have assumed that it is 'racist', but no more that a white guy who fancies Scandinavian blue-eye blonds or olive-skinned Latin beauties. Plenty of folk songs where skin tone get a mention.

I suppose I am saying that me being white doesn't make it my problem, it's not my culture.

It was, by the way, me who challenged you over your 'broad brush' approach in the Obama thread. Go on then, what about Ethiopia ? A long Christian tradition. And, I find, many gorgeous looking girls.

Subject: RE: BS: How disturbed should I be?
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 28 Jul 15 - 03:33 PM

For years people have told me I am very disturbed but I have never got to the bottom of how disturbed I should be.

Imagine my disappointment on reading this thread...