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Today's
Stories
July
28, 2005
Amina
Mire
Pigmentation and Empire: the Emerging
Skin-Whitening Industry
July
27, 2005
Roger
Morris
The Source Beyond Rove: Condoleezza
Rice at the Center of the Plame Scandal
Gary
Leupp
Is Iran Being Set Up?
Paul
Craig Roberts
US Falling Behind Across the Board
Jackie
Corr
Class War on the Ruby River: the Billionaire with His Foot in
His Mouth
Mike
Whitney
The Coming End of the Housing Bubble
Dave
Zirin
Why Lance Armstrong Must Break with Bush
Christopher
Bradley
Why I Have Trouble Reading the News
Norman
Solomon
Thomas Friedman, Liberal Sadist?
Website
of the Day
Stormin' Norman
July
26, 2005
Suren
Pillay
The Enemy Within: When the "Other"
is One of "Us"
JoAnn
Wypijewski
Fission and Fizzle in Chicago: SEIU and
Teamsters Quit the AFL
Patrick
Cockburn
Iraq: the Unwinnable War
David
Anderson
When the Greatest Outrage is the Lack of Outrage: NYC's Subway
Searches
Joshua
Frank
Hillary Clinton: Outflanking Bush from the Right
Lenni
Brenner
Biography as Wish-Fulfillment: Jefferson, Hitchens and Atheism
David
Swanson
Nuking Native Land
July
25, 2005
Paul
Craig Roberts
China-Mart Takes Over
M.
Shahid Alam
Terrorism: America Defines Its Targets
Uri
Avnery
March of the Orange Shirts
Stan
Cox
Kreationism in Kansas
Norman
Solomon
"Wagging the Puppy"
Ramzy
Baroud
London Bombings: Barbaric, But Not
Unexpected
Mickey
Z.
No Gun Ri: 55 Years Later
Website
of the Day
The Birth of a Hummingbird in 15 Images
July
23 / 24, 2005
Alexander
Cockburn
Islamo-Anarchs or Islamo-Fascists?
Tariq
Ali
The War Comes Home
Robert
Fisk
Something Happened
Dave
Lindorff
Return of the Academic Witch Hunts
Ricardo
Alarcón
Kidnapping in Miami: the UN, the US and the Cuban 5
Col.
Dan Smith
Living in a Twilight Zone: Troop Strength,
Recruitment and the Draft
Brian
Cloughley
The Pentagon's China Hypocrisy
Kevin
Zeese
Growing Republican Opposition to Iraq War
Bill
Quigley
Harrowing Hours in Haiti
Fred
Gardner
The Reverberations of Raich
Rep.
Ron Paul
The Patriot Act is a Threat to Liberty
Joshua
Frank
Framing Abortion: Gonadal Politics and the Democrats
Shivali
Tukdeo
Project Mumbai Makeover: Casualties of Development
Gilad
Atzmon
Blair's "Evil Ideology"
James
Petras
Baghdad: Barbarism and Civilization (a Fiction)
Ben
Tripp
When Being American Was Fun
Poets'
Basement
Krieger, Louise, Buknatski, Albert and Engel
Website
of the Weekend
Remember the West Memphis 3
July
22, 2005
Heather
Gray
Home Grown Axis of Evil: Corp. Agribusiness,
the Occupation of Iraq and the Dred Scott Decision
David
Domke
The American Press and Credibility
Lance
Selfa
Battle of the Insiders: No Heroes in the Plame Leak Scandal
JoAnn
Wypijewski
Is This Really an "Insurgency"
to Shake Up the Labor Movement?
July
21, 2005
Rose
Ann DeMoro
The Top 10 Problems with the "Crisis"
in the Labor Movement
William
Blum
London: Another Casualty in the War on Terror
J.L.
Chestnut, Jr.
Whites Need to Learn Something: Dixie is Everywhere
Christopher
Brauchli
Strange Affairs: Liberals and Alberto
Gonzales
Joshua
Frank
Plame Blame Game: the 5 Ws
Brian
Concannon, Jr.
Haiti's Elections: Time for a Reality Check
Patrick
Cockburn
The True, Terrible State of Iraq
and the Link to London
Website
of the Day
Who Blew Up the Murrah Building?
July
20, 2005
Cockburn
/ St. Clair
Judge Roberts: Business as Usual
Roxanne
Dunbar-Ortiz
Red Christmas
Ray
McGovern
Did Dick Finger Valerie?: the Hand
of Cheney
Chris
Floyd
Judge Dread: John Roberts and the "Enemy
Combatants"
Uri
Avnery
"Silence is Filth"
Dave
Lindorff
Westmoreland's Body Count Goes Up
by One
Norman
Solomon
Gen. Westmoreland's Death Wish
Bill
Quigley
Travels in Haiti with a Wanted Priest
July
19, 2005
Tariq
Ali
An Isolated Regime
John
Ross
Jihad Meets G-8
Davey
D.
More
Clear Channel Censorship: "Don't F--K Around with Tha Police"
Greg
Weiher
Muzzling Saddam: the Old Bait-and-Switch
in Iraqi Jurisprudence
Brian
McKinlay
An "Arse Licker" Goes to Washington: John Howard's
Grand Tour
Norman
Solomon
Nukes for India; Threats for Iran
Dave
Lindorff
Get Back to Where We Once Belonged
Bill
Christison
Bush's Itinerary: First Stop Syria,
Next Stop Iran
Joshua
Frank
Laura's Justice?: Meet Edith Brown
Clement
July
18, 2005
Joshua
Frank
An Interview with Ward Churchill
M.
Shahid Alam
A Muslim Problem: Did Thomas Friedman
Flunk History?
Jude
Wanniski
Memo to Patrick Fitzgerald
Ron
Jacobs
A Weekend to Stop the War
Mike
Whitney
The Straight Line Between Falluja and King's Cross Station
William
MacDougall
From "Bring It On" to "London Can Take It"
Seth
Sandronsky
Temporary Recovery: New Frontiers in Labor Flexibility
Richard
Lichtman
The Consolations of George Lakoff
Paul
Craig Roberts
Can Congressional Republicans End
Bush's Wars?
Website
of the Weekend
Novels of the Neo-Cons
July
15 / 17, 2005
Alexander
Cockburn
Don't You Dare Call It Treason
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Sticky Fingers: the Making of Halliburton
Paul
Craig Roberts
Economic Treason
Harry
Browne
"What They Do to Us, They Will
Do to You": Shell Oil in Mayo, Ireland
Uri
Davis, Ilan Pappe and Tamar Yaron
A Warning from Israel
Andrew
Rubin
End of the Enlightenment: an Open Letter to Stephen Plaut
Patrick
Cockburn
Iraq's Ghost Battalions
J.L.
Chestnut, Jr.
Changes in Selma: Standing Up to Racism in the South
Fred
Gardner
A Professional Bust
Christopher
Brauchli
An Olympic Feat: How to "Double" Aid with No New Money
Chris
Floyd
The Great Iraq Oil Giveaway
Ben
Tripp
The Dark Incontinent
Col.
Dan Smith
General Abizaid, I'm Glad You Asked
Jason
Leopold
What Did Rove Say and When Did He
Say It?
Jack
Random
Miller Time
Norman
Solomon
War and Venture Capitalism
George
Ochenski
Liberate Montana's Rivers: Come One, Come All!
Website
of the Weekend
Vote for CounterPuncher David Vest
July
14, 2005
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Sticky Fingers: the Making of Halliburton
Subcomandante
Marcos
This is What Will Do and How We Shall Do It: the Sixth Declaration
of the Selva Lacandona
Dave
Lindorff
No More Moral Relativism: the US is a Terrorist State
Joshua
Frank
Rove Agency: Liberals and the CIA
Jude
Wanniski
Those 8 Black Pages: What's the Real Story on Karl Rove?
Dave
Zirin
Storming the Castle
Kevin
Zeese
Exit Strategy: Within Reach?
Robert
Jensen
War Myths and the Press
Reza
Fiyouzat
A Worldwide Call to Free Akbar Ganji
Carol
Norris
Governor Paranoid: Schwarzenegger Comes Unhinged
Website
of the Day
Nate Osborn: Heroic Human Rights Activist and CounterPuncher
July
13, 2005
Brian
Cloughley
Cold Blooded Murders in Iraq
George
Galloway
We Can't Separate the London Bombings
from the Political Backdrop
Carlos
Fierro
A Supreme Waste of Time
Sarah
Knopp
Hate on the Border
Norman
Solomon
"Isolated Pockets of Problems": the Fake Optimism of
Washington's Warriors
Mickey
Z.
Water on the Brain
Jim
Minick
The Right Tree in the Right Place
Pat
Williams
American Indian Education for All
Andrew
N. Rubin
Life Behind the Wall: "We are
No Longer Able to See the Sun Set"
Website
of the Day
"London's Burning": the Mikey Mix
July
12, 2005
Laith
al-Saud
Voices of Resistance: an Interview with
Dr. Mohammed al-Obaidi of Iraq's Peoples' Struggle Movement
Kara
N. Tina
"This is How We Do It": Report
from the Gleneagles Battlefield
William
A. Cook
The London Bombings: Why Has It Come to This?
Jack
Bratich
2 Live Cruise: Tom Cruise v. Big Pharma
Amina
Mire
The Problem with Speaking in the Name of Others
Dick
J. Reavis
Lessons from the Christian Jihadists:
the Virtues of Burning Crosses and Colored Smoke
Kevin
Zeese
Depleted Uranium: States Take Action to Protect Their Vets
Paul
Craig Roberts
No-Think Nation
Website
of the Day
Coke Gags Indian Artist
July
9 / 11, 2005
Alexander
Cockburn
After the Bombings
Uri
Avnery
War of the Colors in Israel
Sheldon
Rampton
Blaming Galloway: Rhetoric vs. Reality
in London
Bill
Christison
Hiroshima's 60th Anniversary and Nukes in Iran: an Opportunity
or Just More Hand-wringing from the Peace Movement?
Robert
Fisk
Blair's Alliance with Bush Bombed
Stephen
Winspear
Collateral Damage in London?
Saul
Landau
Mission Accomplished: Iraq is Broken
Behrooz
Ghamari
Thomas Friedman's Muslim Problem
Karl
Beitel
False Promises and Real Debt Relief
Brian
Concannon, Jr.
Throwing Gasoline on Haiti's Fires
Fred
Gardner
Sentencing Season
John
Whitlow
And What Does the Market Say?
Niranjan
Ramakrishnan
The London Blasts: Who's Being Transformed, Them or Us?
Lila
Rajiva
Witches and Bastards
Laura
Carlsen
CAFTA: Deepening the Inequities
Jackie
Corr
Ted Turner and Jiminy Cricket
Dave
Lindorff
"My Brother Went Over There Gung Ho; Now He's Just Bitter"
N.
D. Jayaprakash
Why the CIA Tried to Kill Chou En Lai at the Bandung Conference
Seth
Sandronsky
Meet the "Truth Tour": Rightwing Radio Hosts Go to
Iraq
Norman
Madarasz
The Choking of Brazil's Worker Party
Ben
Tripp
The Inevitability of George W. Bush
Poets'
Basement
Louise, Albert, Landau, Davies and Engel
Website
of the Weekend
The Mother of All Enemies Lists
July
8, 2005
Paul
Craig Roberts
Blowback Hits Britain: Londoners
Pay Heavy Price for Blair's Deception
Tariq
Ali
The London Bombings: Why They Happened
Monica
Benderman
One Soldier's Fight to Legalize Morality
Rick
Jahnkow
Beyond Opt-Out: the Counter-Recruitment Movement
Christopher
Brauchli
Dear Vet: If You Want to Eat While You Recuperate, You Gotta
Pay Extra
Kim
Peterson
Bombs in the Underground: Terror Begats Terror
Joshua
Frank
Leakers and Liars: Inching Toward Indictments?
Norman
Solomon
Messages from the Carnage
Website
of the Day
An Interview with Ray McGovern
July
7, 2005
Cockburn
/ St. Clair
Judy Miller: the Luckiest Martyr
John
Walsh
More Hawkish Than Bush: Dems in Full
Battle Cry
Mike
Marqusee
Message from London
Gilad
Atzmon
London's Burning
Nicole
Colson
Showdown at the Supreme Court
Jack
Random
Judith Miller, Anti-Hero
Norman
Solomon
Judith Miller, Drum Majorette for
War
Len
Colodny
Is Bob Woodward Still Protecting Al Haig?
Cockburn
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|
July 28, 2005
A CounterPunch
Special Report
Pigmentation and Empire
The Emerging
Skin-Whitening Industry
By
AMINA MIRE
Skin-whitening or skin-bleaching is
a practice whereby women (and some men) use various forms of
skin-whitening products in order to make their skin appear as
white as possible. As an anti-aging therapy, skin-whitening promises
to "restore" as well as to"transform" the
aging skins of women and make them smooth, wrinkle-free-younger-looking.
In this context, the natural aging process is systematically
framed as a pathological condition which must be interrupted
through measures such as "elective surgery" and or
by bleaching out the signs of aging such as "age spots."
In this way, in the case of white women, skin-whitening is presented
as a legitimate intervention designed to 'cure' and mitigate
the disease of aging. Skin-whitening as a biomedical intervention
is predicated on the pathologization of the natural aging processes
in all women, white women in particular.
At least in the United States,
racially white eastern and southern European women have used
skin-whitening in order to appear as 'white' as their 'Anglo-Saxon'
"native" white sisters. In the United States, women
of colour also have practiced skin-whitening. Many of the early
skin-bleaching commodities such as Nodinalina skin bleaching
cream, a product which has been in the US market since 1889,
contained 10 per cent ammoniated mercury. Mercury is a highly
toxic agent with serious health implications. According to Kathy
Peiss , in 1930, a single survey found advertising for 232 different
brand names of skin-bleaching creams promoted in mainstream magazines
to mainly white women consumers in the United States.
If dark skinned eastern and
southern Europeans can "pass" for white with a little
help from skin-bleaching creams, those with sufficiently light
skin tones but who are legally categorized as racially black
by their invisible " one drop" of "black blood",
could also "pass" for white as well. The "appearance
of whiteness" is the key to accessing the exclusive cultural
and economic privileges whiteness accrues. The fear of the infiltration
of "invisible' blackness has fuelled both the marketing
strategies of industry and the anxieties of white women that
they may not appear "white enough". Peiss writes:
Dorothy Dignam's ads for Nadinola
skin bleach and Nadine face power, appearing in mass circulation
women's magazine, resurrected the Old South. "This line
made in the South was largely sold to the Negro market; the advertising
was a planned attempt to capture the white market also. Her paean
to "the beauty secret of Southern women," featuring
plantations, magnolia blossoms, and hoop-skirted bells, erased
any hint of Nadinola's black clientele. Although usually rendered
obliquely, racial prejudice was an explicit talking point for
manufacturers Albert F. Wood: "A white person objects to
a swarthy brown-hued or mulatto-like skin, therefore if staying
much out of doors use regularly Satin Skin Vanishing Greaseless
Cream to keep the skin normally white (Peiss 1998,150).
But even though the anxiety
of bearing the invisible mark of black blood has, in part, fuelled
white women's skin-whitening practices, Peiss rejects the actual
possibility that some women of colour may have passed for white
by using skin-whitening creams. This is because, according to
Peiss, African American women had "disabling" African
features that would not allow them to pass for white. In this
way, while skin-whitening helped 'dark skinned' eastern and southern
European immigrant women to blend into the "secure"
domain of whiteness, the racial border between whiteness and
blackness is magically secured by the social and political order
of the colour line.
Women might purchase a skin
whitener that covered and colored the skin and simultaneously
disclaim its status as paint. For women of European descent,
whitening could be absorbed within acceptable skincare routine
and assimilated into the ruling beauty ideas, the natural face
of white genteel womanhood-although, as Jessie Benton Frémont
testified, one glance at the hands could undo this careful effort
to naturalize artifice. For African Americans, the fiction was
impossible: Whitening cosmetics, touted as cures for "disabling"
African features, reinforced a racialized aesthetic through a
makeover that appeared anything but natural.
What these more than "skin
deep," uniquely "disabling" African features were
is not stated by Peiss. However, this crude insinuation hints
at Peiss' refusal to entertain the possibility that skin-whitening
may have been used not just by eastern and southern dark skinned
women to "pass for Anglo-Saxons," but that women of
colour who were sufficiently light skinned have also practiced
skin-whitening in order to "pass" for white. Since
appearing white is the "only game in town," there are
no other grounds outside of appearance on which whiteness as
an exclusive racial identity can be secured. Piess's historical
documentation of the history of the formation and consolidation
of the American beauty industry clearly demonstrates that skin-whitening
has facilitated the "racial passing" of certain dark
skinned women from eastern and southern Europe. In this context,
the practice of skin-whitening is implicated in the American
history of racial segregation and racial "passing."
Peiss's analysis precludes
the possibility of African Americans with light skins passing
for white by using skin-whitening creams, while claiming that
eastern and southern European women with "dark skin tones"
could do so, implicitly offers skin-whitening as 'legitimate'
when practicd by 'white' women and as 'illegitimate' and futile
for women of colour. This is also the paradigm of much of the
published medical literature on the health risks associated with
the use of skin-whitening creams with toxic chemical agents.
Even though white women have been using both lead and mercury
based skin-whitening creams in order to whiten their faces and
bodies for centuries, when it comes to warning the public about
the dangers associated with this deadly practice, it is often
the terribly damaged faces of women of colour which are used
for visual illustration.
For example, almost all the
medical literature published by western medical and dermatology
journals offer us women of colour as victims of the dubious desire
for unattainable corporeal whiteness. This same unattainable
desire is often reinforced with horrifying images of the damaged
faces and bodies of women of color after using cheap skin-whitening
creams containing toxic chemical agents such as ammoniated mercury,
corticosteroids, and hydroquinone.
The faces of Black South
Africans permanently damaged by long-term use of Over-the-Counter
(OTC) 2 per cent hydroquinone based skin-whitening cream.
The emphasis on such 'health
risks'has facilitated the production, and marketing around the
world, of new and, conceivably, 'safer' but highly expensive
skin-whitening commodities and combatant technologies. The emerging
'high-end' skin-whitening commodities are marketed mainly to
affluent Asian women to modify skin tone, also to white women
as anti-aging therapy.
So, as one might might expect,
race, class and gender dynamics inform the marketing strategy
of the new skin-whitening corporate drive. The symbolic and literal
'whitening' of darker bodies still conditions the advertising
rhetoric for skin-whitening products.
In Africa, the practice of
skin-whitening is traditionally associated with white colonial
oppression . Those who practiced skin-whitening, were and are
still condemned as self-hating dupes, suffering from an inferiority
complex. Consequently, those engaging in this practice often
do so covertly. So it is only when users of skin-whitening seek
medical help from the devastating effects of bodily damage caused
by the use of toxic skin-whitening creams that news about this
practice gets to the public domain. Tsitsi Dangarembga's novel
Nervous Conditions (1988) succinctly captures the contradiction
between the colonizing effects of white supremacy and African
women's yearning for respectability and idealized feminine aesthetics
of beauty.
Lucia was my mother's sister,
several years younger than my mother and a wild woman in spite
of or may be because of her beauty. She was dark like my
mother, but unlike my mother her complexion always had a light
shinning from underneath the skin, so she could afford to scoff
at the skin-lightening creams that other girls used.
The association in the above
quote of girls with "bad skin" with the use of skin-lightening
cream is interesting. On the one hand, it suggests that skin-whitening
has a therapeutic function. On the other hand, it may be referring
to one of the sinister side effects of the use of skin-whitening:
the systemic darkening of the affected area of the skin due to
the accumulation of toxic skin-whitening residue inside the skin
called exogenous ochrinosis (cf.2). Currently, many African countries
have banned the commercial trafficking of skin-whitening. However,
skin-whitening products, including those containing highly toxic
chemical agents, are currently aggressively marketed to white
women in North America as "anti-aging therapy." It
is not clear how 2 per cent hydroquinone based skin-whitening
cream can cause a permanent disfigurement of African women's
faces and bodies while 4 per cent hydroquinone based skin-whitening
cream can be promoted to white women as anti-aging therapy. The
following ad is for a skin-whitening cream called Lustra which
contains 4 per cent hydroquinone.
This is the same chemical agent
which has caused the disfigurement of the South African woman
in the above image and of countless other women around the world.
This product is manufactured by a major US- based pharmaceutical
company. Lustra skin-whitening cream is extensively promoted
on internet shops, beauty salons and dermatology offices in the
United States. The primary clientele of Lustra are white middle-class
women
An advertisement for Lustra
skin-whitening cream. Lustra Cream contains 4 per cent hydroquinone.
Currently, transnational biotechnology,
pharmaceutical and cosmetics corporations are engaged in the
research and development and the mass marketing of a plethora
of new forms of skin-whitening products which can "bleach-out"
the "dark skin tones" of women of colour and can remove
corporeal evidence of the aging processes, 'unhealthy life-style'
and overall pollution from the skin of white women. In North
America and Europe, the emerging high-end skin-whitening products
have been promoted as new 'therapeutic' regimes which can 'cleanse,'
'purify' and 'regenerate' aging skin. Consequently, in North
America and Europe, skin-whitening commodities aimed at white
women are often sold under the bannerof 'anti-aging skincare.'
In other parts of the world skin-whitening commodities are promoted
to 'whiten' and 'brighten' the 'dark skin tones' of women of
colour.
This growing industry is a
lucrative one whose reach is greatly facilitated by systematic
use of the internet as the main medium for the dissemination
of advertising messages for skin-whitening products and related
technologies. Some of the leading transnational corporations
engaged in the 'trafficking' of skin-whitening products have
extensive e-business domains. Often these companies set up internet
domains and e-shops in specific countries such as China, Japan,
South Korea, Thailand, Singapore, Indonesia, just to name a few.
In addition to such e-business sales drives, extensive use of
the internet allows these corporations to avoid both the negative
political implications and legal regulatory restrictions they
could face if they were to openly promote skin-whitening commodities
in North America and European markets.
The 'ethnic' skin-whitening
market around the world is decentralized as well being covert.
This is because many of the skin-whitening products which target
poor women, particularly black women, including women of colour
living in North America and Europe, are relatively cheap but
often contain highly toxic chemical agents such as mercury, hydroquinone
and corticosteroids.
In Europe and North America,
the 'ethnic" skin-whitening products are usually sold in
'ethnic-oriented' grocery stores and "beauty" salons.
Many of these low end' but toxic skin-whitening products are
manufactured in the Third World and are imported both legally
and illegally to North America and Europe. Even though the western
health authorities are well aware of the health risks associated
with these toxic skin-whitening products they have taken very
littlem if any, action to control their importation or to regulate
their sales.
The other, more robust trend
is the marketing of expensive skin-whitening products to affluent
Asian women in living in Pacific Asian countries such as Japan,
Korea, China, Thailand, Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia and others.
This represents the largest slice of the skin-whitening global
market.
Partly because of the covert
nature of the trafficking and informal circulation of toxic skin-whitening
commodities, it is hard to gain accurate estimates of the market
share of the 'low end' but highly toxic skin-whitening market.
Similarly, because the 'high end' and, presumably less toxic
skin-whitening commodities targeted to whites are promoted under
the purview of 'anti-aging therapy,' it is as difficult to gain
an accurate or even a generally reliable estimate of the North
America and European market shares of skin-whitening products
targeted to white women. However, in Asia, where the skin-whitening
market outside of Europe and North America is anchored, in 2001,
in Japan alone, the skin-whitening market was estimated to be
worth $ 5.6. billion. According to the same report, the fastest
growing skin-whitening market in Asia is China. In 2001, China's
skin-whitening market was estimated to be over $ 1.3 billion.
Based on the readily available
mass of online advertising for emerging 'high end' skin-whitening
products by transnational corporations, these products claim
that they can 'improve' the 'appearance' as well as the 'health'
of users. These skin-whitening commodities have powerful pharmaceutical
properties; they can penetrate the skin and suppress the synthesis
of the skin pigment, melanin . Indeed, the suppression of 'dark'
pigment, melanin, is listed as an explicit example of skin-whitening
health promotion benefits. Frantz Fanon wrote about the "corporeal
malediction" of dark skin and here's the antidote! The damned
of the earth can thus swiftly alleviate their condition by peaceful,
albeit commercial means.
In many of the advertisements
for skin-whitening I come across during my research, a discursive
link is made between youthfulness and whiteness and whiteness
and racial superiority. Second, in these advertisements, the
aging process of white women is often implicitly racialized by
the construction of 'hyper-pigmentation,' 'age-spots,' 'dull'
skin tone,' as signs of "pigmentation pathologies".
Consequently, skin-whitening advertising directed to white women
often promises to 'cleanse,' 'purify,' 'transform' and 'restore'
white women's 'smooth' and 'radiant' youthful white skin. Such
advertising tries to expand the skin-whitening market with the
covert rhetoric of racializing aesthetics. One recurring theme
which runs through most of the promotional ads for skin-whitening
posted at Asia registered internet sites is the claim that skin-whitening
cosmetics can transform the 'yellow' skin tones of Asian women
to flawlessly 'radiant' white. These advertisements often deploy
the visual technique of 'before' images of 'unhappy,' 'dark'
faces of 'Asian-looking' models and 'after' images of smiling
'whitened' faces of the same models .
I now want to take the reader
to the internet-based advertisements for skin-whitening products
by the world's largest cosmetics company a leading promoter
of new skin-whitening cosmetics the L'Oreal cosmetics company.
L'Oreal's advertisements for skin-whitening products posted at
internet sites run by L'Oreal subsidiaries such as Lancôme,
Vichy Laboratories and L'Oreal Paris systematically deploy a
mixture of racializing rhetoric and dazzling visual images.
Many of these advertisements
which are directed mainly to Asian women use images and narratives
with implicit references to the aesthetic 'inferiority' of 'dark'
and 'yellow' skin tones of Asian women. In these ads, this implied
is often reinforced with illustrations of the pathological nature
of 'dark' and 'yellow' skin tones of 'Asian-looking' models.
With over US$14 billion sales
in 2003, L'Oreal is the largest cosmetics company in the world.
The company can be best understood as an economic 'super-structure'
consisting of, at least, 12 major subsidiaries such as Lancôme
Paris, Vichy Laboratories, La Roche-Posay Laboratoire Pharmacaceutique,
Biotherm, L'Oreal Paris, Garnier, L'Oreal professional Paris,
Giorgio Armani Perfumes, Maybelline New York, Ralph Lauren, Helena
Rubinstein skincare, Shu Uemura, Maxtrix, Redken, SoftSheen-Carlson™.
Not all of the above listed L'Oreal subsidiaries deal with the
promotion of skin-whitening cosmetics. However, this extensive
list of L'Oreal subsidiaries illustrates the company's economic
power and structural complexity. L'Oreal is also a 20 per cent
shareholder of a major French based pharmaceutical firm, Sanofi-Synthélabo.
A recent merger worth 60£
billion with another European based pharmaceutical firm, Aventis,
makes Sanofi-Aventis the third largest pharmaceutical company
in the world behind Pfizer and GlaxoSmithKline. I emphasize the
financial link between Sanofi-Aventis and L'Oreal cosmetics in
the present work partly to highlight L'Oreal's close connection
with the pharmaceutical industry. Skin-whitening, in this context,
can be thought of as a lucrative 'spin-off' both for L'Oreal
as well as a way to valorize research and development of pharmaceuticals
outside the highly regulated biomedical domain.
The influence of the pharmaceutical
industry is evidenced by much of L'Oreal's promotional rhetoric
for skin-whitening cosmetics and related technologies. L'Oreal's
ads for skin-whitening cosmetics increasingly blur the line between
cosmetic and pharmaceutical claims. Such close integration between
the cosmetics and pharmaceutical industries has serious social,
medical, and political implications. In fact, L'Oreal has already
designated some of its subsidiaries, such as Vichy Laboratories
and LA Roche-Posay Laboratoire Pharmaceutique, as quasi-pharmaceutical
outlets through which the company can successfully promote skin-whitening
and other cosmetics under the rubric of skincare biomedicine.
The following ads for Vichy Laboratories attest to this opportunistic
cosmetic/pharmaceutical industrial cross-fertilization.
Discover your healthy skin
profile: skin type and hydration. Make an appointment with your
Vichy dermatological skin care consultant to identify your skin
type, its hydration level and receive a skin diagnosis and personalized
skincare recommendation. Vichy Laboratories are devoted to the
health of your skin. Backed by dermatological research, Vichy
offers you a complete line of skincare products containing Vichy
Thermal Spa Water. Dehydration, dryness, skin aging and dull
complexion. Vichy, health skin's answer to all skin conditions.
Not all of Vichy's advertising
messages are couched in such biomedical rhetoric. For instance,
when targeting women of colour, Asian women in particular, their
'dark' or 'yellow' skin tones are often conceptualized as pathological
targets amenable to 'fixing' and transformation. L'Oreal's internet
domains registered in South Korea and China, Singapore, Taiwan
aggressively promote skin-whitening products with such provocative
brand names as "BI-White," "White "Perfect"
and "Blanc Expert." In one of the most stunning acts
of commodity racism, an ad for Vichy's skin-whitening brand,
"BI-White," features what appears to be an Asian woman
peeling off her black facial skin with a zipper. As her black
skin is removed a new 'smooth,' 'whitened' skin with no blemishes
takes its place. The implications of this image are blunt and
chilling. Blackness is false, dirty and ugly. Whiteness is true,
healthy, clean and beautiful.
"BI-White:The skin
Pigmentation ID."
Source: http://www.vichy.com/gb/biwhite.
L'Oreal calls this marketing
strategy 'Geocosmetics:
More than half of Korean women
experience brown spots and 30 per cent of them have a dull complexion.
Over-production of melanin deep in the skin that triggers brown
spots and accumulation of melanin loaded dead cells at the skin's
surface create a dull and uneven complexion. Vichy Laboratories
has been able to associate the complementary effectiveness of
Kojic Acid and pure Vitamin C in an everyday face care: BI-White.
Another L'Oreal advertisement
for skin-whitening brand is called "White Perfect."
This particular skin-whitening brand is sold in L'Oreal's Asian
markets and online e-shops. In that way, those who live outside
Asia can purchase this and other L'Oreal skin-whitening brands
over the internet.
In this ad, the racist aesthetics of "White-Perfect"
reinforces the biomedicalized intervention of Asian women's skin
coded by the sign of "Melanin-Block™." L'Oreal's
advertisements for skin-whitening cosmetics are often reinforced
by constant interplay between the ideological precepts of white
supremacy and the technologically-mediated suppression or "blocking"
of the capacity for Asian women's bodies and skins to produce
skin pigment, melanin.
One of the ways in which L'Oreal enacts the biomedicalization
of women's bodies and the racialization of the aging processes
of women (gendered degeneracy) is through the visual technology
of dismembering women's bodies. A close examination of L'Oreal's
advertisings for skin-whitening products shows a systematic fragmentation
of women's bodies. Almost all the L'Oreal advertising images
which I have came across use cropped faces of women. One of the
visual techniques used by L'Oreal is the pairing of two cropped
faces: one of which bears certain pseudo-pathologies such as
'age spots,' premature-aging,' 'hyper-pigmentation,' and 'wrinkles.'
The other cropped image would feature the whitened, 'smooth,
wrinkle-free' face of a woman.
As a result, L'Oreal's advertising
often visually conceptualizes the practice of skin-whitening
both as a violent technological fragmentation of women's bodies
as well as an instrument of bodily transformation. As the following
advertising for L'Oreal's skin-whitening brand, Blanc Expert,
shows, the visual fragmentation of women's bodies is often reinforced
by the claims of the power of these skin-whitening products to
penetrate deep inside the body thereby transforming both the
inside and the outside of the users of these products.
Lancôme's exclusive Melo-No
Complex™ limits the activity of the messenger NO, a newly-discovered
stimulator of melanin, produced by keratinocytes. The complex,
by targeting keratinocytes, boosts whitening action by 15 times.
A powerful combination of active whitening ingredients targets
melanocytes to more effectively inhibit the source of melanin
production and as a result, diminishes the skin's yellowish
tone.
The image symbolically illustrates
the technological prowess of advanced skin-whitening biotechnology;
its ability to penetrate, fragment, colonize, and discipline
the bodies of women. In this image, the fragmentation of women's
bodies is symbolically illustrated by a beam of light shot through
a tube. Upon penetrating the skin, this phallic beam of light
produces a new "radiant," white face.
In this powerful visually fragmenting
technology, the symbolic order of masculinist technology and
the aesthetics of white supremacy are rendered as flesh in the
"flawless", perfectly whitened and fragmented face
of a woman of colour.
In this context, the aggressive
world-wide marketing of skin-whitening commodities can be legitimated
as benevolent 'cures' designed to transform and transcend the
"dark" "diseased," bodies of women of colour.
Ironically, not all women of colour can afford the "radiant"
whitened faces this technology promises. The following is a price
list for L'Oreal's Blanc Expert line. As I indicated earlier,
this particular skin-whitening brand name is aggressively promoted
to Asian women. Blanc Expert Mela-No Cx Blacc Expert Advanced
Whitening Spot Corrector (30 ml= $125 US), Blanc Expert Mela-NO
Cx Supreme Whitening Spot Corrector (30ml= $100 US ), Blanc Expert
Advanced Whitening & Anti-Dark Circles Eye (100ml= $ 77 US),
Blanc Expert Mela NO Cx Advanced Whitening Night Renovator (100ml=
$ 83 US). This one has the 'cutest' and the most ironic name:
Blanc Expert Mela-No Cx UV Expert Extra Large Double Protection
SPF 50/PA+++ (30 ml= $59 US).
This list clearly demonstrates
two important points: that these products are highly expensive
and that they contain relatively small amounts of skin-whitening
products. There is a common joke in Africa to describe the practice
of face whitening: "Fanta Faces & Coca Cola Bodies."
Fanta, in this context, refers to the orange colour of a soft
drink. The dark colour of the Coke soft drink in contrast refers
to the unbleached bodies of African women. This analogy is particularly
apt because, like skin-bleaching cosmetics, Coca Cola and Fanta
soft drinks are western products which are extensively marketed
in Africa.
In its broadest sense, skin-whitening
as 'anti-aging therapy' aims at intervening, 'halting' and if
possible, 'reversing' the aging processes of mainly white women.
I have suggested earlier that advertisements for skin-whitening
products which are marketed to white women often use language
suffused with the racialization of the aging processes of white
women and the biomedicalization of women of colour's skin tones.
In this market, the paradigmatic
face against which both women of colour and middle aged white
women must be appraised, and ultimately found wanting, is the
'smooth/ radiant/youthful-looking' white face unmarked by age,
labour or class. This technologically-produced 'radiant,' 'age-spot-free,'
'pigmentation-free' young-looking white face is now the universal
standard for the "beautiful" face.
The cover of the 2002 L'Oreal
Annual Report underscores the emergence of the "smooth".
'radiant', technologically produced, "air brushed"
white face. In this image, a female with exceedingly blue eyes
and perfectly white skin gazes vacantly. Her face shows no hint
of life or emotions. This image is simultaneously as frightening
as it is ambiguous. It is difficult to tell whether we are confronting
a computer-generated animation or an image of an actual woman.
This ambiguity is not innocent. The image at once suggests the
corporeal possibility of a perfectly white skin and also whiteness
as an abstract aesthetics. The ambiguity of the corporeality
of this image can be read as an ironic comment on the image itself.
In this reading, this computer-generated visual simulacrum recuperates
the exclusionary aesthetics of whiteness.
L'Oreal has also developed
other powerful tools which are designed to monitor the states
of women's skin and bodies. One instrument of surveillance is
a silicon-based semiconductor sensory device called SkinChip®.
First developed for biometric fingerprinting ID and related surveillance
technologies, this technology has now been adapted as a 'diagnostic'
tool designed to monitor changes in the 'interiors' of women's
skin such as "pigmentation" and "hydration"
levels and other 'pathological' signs. Monitoring the "interior"
of women's skin to gauge their "pigmentation" status
has the potential to usher in a new and sinter form of eugenicist
white supremacist aesthetics. The fact that SkinChip has been
imported from biometric surveillance technology is not insignificant.
Surveillance technologies such as SkinChip also reinforce the
aesthetics of white supremacy and the global expansion of skin-whitening
as a capitalist commodity. L'Oreal is currently developing a
personal-size version of the SkinChip device so that women can
regularly monitor what is happening "inside" their
bodies and on their skins.
I hope that I have demonstrated
that the emerging skin-whitening industry is a lucrative globalized
economic enterprise with profound social and political implications.
L'Oreal's advertising for skin-whitening commodities reinforces
and consolidates the globalized ideology of white supremacy and
the sexist practice of the biomedicialization of women's bodies.
It is in this specific context of the continuum of the western
practice of global racism and the economic practice of commodity
racism that the social, political and cultural implications of
skin-whitening must be located and resisted. Consequently, feminist/antiracist
and anti-colonial responses must confront this social phenomenon
as part and parcel of our old enemy, the "civilising mission"
; the violent moral prerogative to cleanse and purify the mind
and bodies of the "dark/dirt/savage". On March 10,
2004, two weeks prior to the American invasion of Iraq, Time
magazine's cover featured the former Iraqi dictator, Saddam Hussein.
The caption reads: "Life After Saddam: an inside look at
Bush's high-risk plan to occupy Iraq and remake the Middle East"
. Hussein's face is painted white by a white man wearing a white
casual shirt with matching casual white pants and a white baseball
hat using a white paint brush. The colour of the dictrator's
unpainted skin looks exceedingly black and menacing. The lower
half of the dictator's face and neck are riddled with bullet
holes.
Amina Mire is at the University of Toronto and
can be reached at amina.mire@utoronto.ca
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