Stop Questing for Whiteness

                                                 Stop Questing for Whiteness
For the first time when I noticed a bride in my culture I wondered why she needs to apply makeup to look white for the sake of just few hours and with the passage of time I got more startled when brides having more white paint on their faces were given credit for being beautiful. It is a socially constructed ideology that only white women are beautiful. It is easy for the mainstream to carry on the ideology due to their encounter to advertisements, promoting beauty products, in their day to day life. In Asian context media is playing highly imperative role in sending out the message about female white skin. We should stop associating whiteness with female beauty, because women are more than defining them for their skin tone. Giving importance to white skin tone in Asia is deteriorating females’ rights to be known for their talent and hard work. Also, women, who seek for white skin through cosmetics, mainly get adverse effect on their health.
It needs to discourage media to associate women with beauty and advertising the skin lightening products. Seeing such advertisements common women in the society think that woman needs to be white to look beautiful and if not she is worthless. Sohail Kamran, an assistant professor in Fatima Jinnah Women University, Rawalpindi, has carried out a study in order to figure out media role in promoting skin whitening in the country. He states that skin whitening creams are advertised with the aim to have a broad range of consumers for their products. Further Kamran highlights various scenes through which beauty products are advertised. “A college girl with tan color used the fairness cream, which made her face skin white. She received approval from female friends and opposite sex” (Kamran). Seeing something time and again makes someone habitual of it and the person starts perceiving it a natural fact. When women encounter advertisements on magazines and televisions, regulating women beauty and women whiteness, then most probably these women consider it a fact that women are worthy only when they are white. Most advertises, promoting beauty products, convey the message that women are accepted by opposite sex and peer if and only if they are white. Such regulated notions highly motivate most women to use beauty products.
Associating women with whiteness limit them to only physical beauty and most women find no way out where their other strengths and capabilities could be appreciated by the society. It establishes hierarchy in the society when women are only known for the physical beauty. Elayne Saltzberg, a postdoctoral clinical psychology fellow at Yale University School of Medicine and Joan C. Chrisler, a Professor of Psychology at Connecticut College mention Dr. Rita Freedman’s quote in their article, who is a psychologist and a noted expert on topics related to physical appearance. According to Freedman, “Attractiveness is prerequisite for femininity but not for masculinity. The word beauty always refers to the female body. Attractive male bodies are described as “handsome,” a word derived from “hand” that refers as much to action as appearance” (Saltzberg). It would not be wrong to assume that almost all men believe that women take much time to get ready while going for any party, family function, outing or some public gatherings. Women are not born with the instinct to take a lot of time to get ready; however, it is what the society makes them to be so. Society demands from them to be up to the beauty standards and even the compliments women are given mainly define their physique, unlike men who are praised for being talented or for their actions. Not all women in Asian societies remain fortunate enough to meet the standards, kept by the society, for being white and the ones who leave behind, struggle to meet the standards through using skin whitening creams. It is also possible that some women might not even try the beauty products, but get psychologically affected for being less important in the society. Society needs to change its perspective regarding female and male beauty. Women need encouragement in order to be known for their actions, capabilities and intelligent.
    When the ideology of associating women with whiteness remains alive, in most cases it makes those women oppressed, who do not meet the standards of beauty. Ian A. Parker (born 1956) is a British psychologist who has been a principal exponent of three quite diverse critical traditions inside the discipline, supervised an article “‘Asian Women Magazine: A Discourse…”. In this article various Asian Magazines are analyzed with the aim to know how Asian women are shown in the magazines. It is stated at one point in the article that with the union of women images and the title like ‘Rapunzel’ and ‘Sleeping beauty’ Asian magazines are sending out the message, “that dark skin is associated with the sinful side of femininity and pale-skin associated with purity and innocence” (Parker 10). Further, the article includes that according to one expert “the subcontinent origins for the preference for light-skin, attributing this prejudice to ancient times arguing that people wished to mirror the physical attributes of the dominant groups. For the sub-continent these were the higher Indian castes of Brahamins and Kshatriyas, who had lighter skin than the lower castes” (Parker 13). When the society judges women’s class statuses on the ground of their white skin, it life becomes hard for the women, having dark skin complexion. In most cases these dark skinned women are not easily accepted by the people around them and they are being discriminated. At this point such women cannot be expected to play a magnificent role in the society or to contribute toward the development of the society. Hence, more probably most of the time dark-skinned women are psychologically affected.
Most women in Asia lose their self worth and get psychologically affected when they are not up to the standards of beauty, kept by the society and media. When a woman encounters talks and thoughts about female beauty in her surrounding and she always sees female beauty is rewarded in media then most probably she ignores her capabilities and strives to be known for her beauty. Looking for the advertisements in the media and as well as society’s perception about white skin in the history, it can be said that questing for white skin can hardly be a woman’s personal choice. Society keeps a beauty standard and judges women on the basis of those standards. As Lei Zhang is an Assistant Professor of Agribusiness and Applied Economics at North Dakota State University, writes that as a result of whiteness as a beauty standard for women, most of the Asian women show less self-esteem when they are unable to meet the standard (Zhang). Such women get scared of being judged on the ground of their dark skin tone and that is how they lose confidence from themselves to conduct something fruitful and prove themselves worthy. It is also possible that when women come up with groundbreaking ideas, they are but down by the society just because they are not white or beautiful.
Most women use cosmetics in order to look white, following beauty standard shown in media; such cosmetics mostly have adverse effect on their health. Media sources often advertise skin whitening products and the advantages women gain being white: they would be shown getting wealthy spouses, availing better job opportunities and also having happy lives. When women in the society come across such advertisements they try to imitate them and choose to use the beauty products. It is mentioned earlier that Obiora N. Anekwe, a graduate of Clark Atlanta University (B.A., Mass Media Arts), writes about the adverse effects of skin lightening creams on a woman’s health. He states, “The ethical issue involved in skin bleaching is that many skin bleaching products cause great harm to customers due to high levels of mercury. Thus, many customers who buy these products are endangering the health of their skin” (Anekwe). This is how women, who use skin whitening creams, get involved into health issues. The issue of skin related diseases due to use of skin whitening creams needs to be addressed in order to aware women to avoid using the superficial means to be white and generally society needs to know to change its perception about female beauty.
The society needs awareness in order to know a woman’s worth, not considering her skin complexion. However, most importantly, media should stop promoting female beauty standard. By changing the mainstream perception about female idealized beauty, actually a society’s shape could be changed; it can help women to step forward to contribute to its development.




  

Work Citation
Zhang, Lei. “Western Beauty Ideals on the Asian Population.” Web. 14 April. 2014.
<http://twp.duke.edu/uploads/media_items/leizhang-draft1-delib2013.original.pdf>.
Anekwe, N. Obiora. “The Global Phenomenon of Skin Bleaching: A Crisis in Public Health
(Part 1).” 29 Jan. 2014. Web. 14 April. 2014. <http://voicesinbioethics.org/2014/01/29/the-
global-phenomenon-of-skin-bleaching-a-crisis-in-public-health-an-opinion-editorial-part-1/>.
Panagda, Charundi. “The Dark Beauty’s Struggle.” NOW’s Blog For Equality. 2011. Web. 14
     April. 2014. <http://www.now.org/news/blogs/index.php/sayit/2011/10/19/dark-beautys-
struggle>.
Saltzberg, Elayne and Joan C. Chrisler. “Beauty Is the Beast: Psychological Effects of the
Pursuit of the Perfect Female Body.” 1995. Web. 19 April 2014.
Kamran, Sohail. “Potential Issues of Skin Fairness Creams TV advertisements in Pakistan.”
EJBO Electronic Journal of Business Ethics and Organization Studies. 2010. Web. 19 April 2014. < http://ejbo.jyu.fi/pdf/ejbo_vol15_no1_pages_15-20.pdf>.
Parker, A. Ian. “Asian Women Magazine: A Discourse Analysis on the construction of ‘Race’
 and ‘Gender’.” Manchester Metropolitan University. March 2011. Web. 19 April 2014.