> Oh, there are blacks in the audience who might? wow! Hadn't even
> thought of them.
Coincidentally, a thread on whiteness has been running along with a thread on Ann Coulter.
> On 12/8/05, Willy Greenfields <filthydirtyunwashed at yahoo.com>
> wrote:
> > >You think? White-ish people with roundish eyes are
> > also popular
> > >in Japanese advertising, no?
> >
> > I worked in Thailand for about a year. Same deal
> > there, though my colleagues chalked it up to darker
> > skin being associated w/ farm work and peasantry while
> > lighter skin was associated somewhat with the local
> > Thai-Chinese elite.
>
> I think this last is just trying to put the 'best' -- class --
> gloss on this penchant for whiteness. But I think it is a huge
> hangover from colonial rule and the all too evident deference shown
> white people, at least to their face -- and this runs the gamut
> from the rich to the poor.
>
> Whitening cosmetics dominate the Asian cosmetics market -- if I
> recall, it accounts for some 60% of the cosmetics market. Along
> with this is the hair-colouring stuff. Sure, it used to be the case
> that henna -- a natural product -- was used for hair colouring, and
> for colouring nails. But now, it's hard to miss the hair-blonding
> -- which, at a glance, actually induces a response of malnourishment.
>
> As for advertising, I think it's across the whole region -- except
> when ethnicity is the point of the ad -- that lighter, paler, so-
> called 'pan-Asian' features are the rule.
>
> kj
Really, what is Ann Coulter's (aggressively asserted) claim to beauty except that she is white, blonde, tall, and thin? Mind you, I'm not saying that tall and thin blondes can never be sexy and attractive, but, in her case, I feel that the Right is telling us that we are all -- regardless of our own cultures' beauty standards or idiosyncratic hierarchy of preferences -- supposed to accept her as "beautiful" just because the current white standard says that she _must_ be (never mind that she is probably too bony even by the prevailing white standard, let alone the Black standard).
Yoshie Furuhashi <http://montages.blogspot.com> <http://monthlyreview.org> <http://mrzine.org>