Caucasians, tanning and the broader issues for all
I have been living in Europe for a few years now and have noticed how Europeans and indeed Westerners eagerly await the coming of the Summer. As a black person, I also look forward to the summer as well, especially having endured the very cold Winter months. However in this blog, I don't intend to focus on the very high temperatures that was experienced across Europe today. My focus is on the urge to have a tanned body, which majority of Caucasians crave for.From my research, I discovered that Caucasians view tanning as a status symbol, an indication that the tanned individual is wealthy, wealthy enough to either afford a holiday to soak up the God-given gift of sunlight in places like Spain, or go to Tanning Saloon or just wait at home and hope for a really hot summer. The craving for tanning is so huge that a lot of Caucasians ignore the negative health effects of too much sun, resulting in skin burns and even cancer of the skin.
In other climes, the story is differently similar (excuse my grammar, if incorrect). The Asians (Chinese, Indians, Japanese) consider a dark skin as a symbol of living a hard and difficult life. That explains why most Asians carry an Umbrella in the summer months in order to avoid getting a darker or tanned skin. On a lighter side, black guys find it difficult to date Asian women because of the skin colour (Yours sincerely has a personal experience of this lol). The recent winner of the Most beautiful Girl in Japan is biracial- has an African-American father and a Japanese mother and some Japanese don't recognise her as being Japanese enough. In India, darker skinned-Indians are discriminated against for their skin colour.
In the black community, being light complexioned is also viewed as a sign of affluence as more often than not, this comes at a cost, cost of purchasing skin-lightening creams, skin-lightening surgery, etc
The broader issues from this is that there are people in every race that appear not be satisfied with their skin colour. They make every effort to either make it darker or lighter as the case may be. They want to look like people from other races.
If we can all agree on this issue, then I would expect that there should be less discrimination and racism in our world today. Peace
Comments (14)
Many kind of cream (including the side effects) to make the skin lighter but still to me, original color is the best.
I do like having a tan though. I feel better, healthier, when I have one.
And as we don't get enough Vitamin D most of the year, i like to soak it up when I can!
I use to tan as a teen but I didn't do it so people would think I was wealthy. You can be poor and still have a good tan! I did it because I thought I looked better and healthier looking because I was pale. I always burned first though
Thanks for your kind comments re my poem.
Here is a little episode on the subject. I had a white Canadian woman friend. She had a dark skinned boyfriend. Whenever they went to the park in Summer, they always had to spend some time searching for a suitable spot near the edge of an area shaded by a tree to spread the blanket or towel on which they could lie down or sit together.
She occupied the portion exposed to the sun to get a sun tan, whereas he stayed on the shaded portion to avoid the direct exposure to the sun.
It was really quite hilarious.
It's not like in Africa. These bleaching products are not only available to the rich, bleaching/burning their skin is a sign of status regardless of the fact that rich and poor alike can do it. Whitening your skin in Africa is a status symbol in and of itself. Bleaching your skin is a rich AND poor man's option, yet remains a status symbol. Why?
It's simply wrong for so many reasons to conflate Europeans tanning under the sun with African bleaching their skin and bathing in boiling hot water.
Just also want to point out that Asians like to surgically alter their eyelids and noses to look more "western". And the skin lightening creams are terrible--they do damage to liver or kidneys. I would never want to allow my boyfriend to use those. I don't know anything about the surgery or shots, never heard of it before.