Is Skin Tone Bias Real?
It’s not all black and white
Colorism is nothing new. It’s only recently that changes on a noticeable scale are being made, such as Rihanna’s makeup line, Fenty Beauty, whose slogan is “Beauty for All”.
“Perfect for women of color” say many such women. And perfect timing too, as racial and ethnic minorities are growing in number all across America.
Now women of all skin tones can enjoy products that actually suit them.
But this doesn’t put an end to issues surrounding skin tone.
Writing for The Guardian, Kaitlyn Greenidge tackles things head-on:
I started with the marriage market, and found out dark-skinned women are less likely to be married than lighter-skinned women. But colorism shows up in even starker ways: the difference in pay rates between darker-skinned and lighter-skinned men mirrors the differences in pay between whites and blacks. Darker-skinned women are given longer prison sentences than their light-skinned counterparts. And this discrimination starts young — if you are a dark-skinned girl, you are three times more likely to be suspended from school than your light skinned peers.
She also says colorism influences memory.
Lighter-skinned people are perceived to be more intelligent. Even when darker-skinned people are educated and have the credentials, they’re remembered as having lighter skin.
We can’t forget how Nivea (as well as Dove and Heineken) pushed the agenda that lighter is better.
But consider the (seeming) universality of whiteness.
Mita Mallick, a proponent of diversity and inclusion, made this observation with regards to social media content:
Post after post, I saw white hands holding up jars. Holding ingredients in their white hands. Spreading product with a knife onto a sandwich. White hands pulling apart a deliciously gooey grilled cheese sandwich. White hands were the default; white hands were normative.
White is all around us. Not necessarily literally (depending on where you live) but in the visuals we consume.
Hollywood is becoming more mindful of their casting practices (people of color accounted for almost 40% of film leads) but still has a long way to go.
Bollywood, which is notorious for propagating colorism, is even more behind. “Fairness solutions” — aka skin lightening products — are plastered on TV and fill up store shelves. Many of the top celebrities in India endorse these products, pressurizing those of darker skin to buy into the hype to attain a “star quality”.
“Dark skinned Indians are continually portrayed as inferior and undesirable.”
Anecdotally, I know for a fact that both male and female peers of mine have disparaged darkness. Whether that’s verbalizing point-blank that being darker is worse in some way, or fetishizing whiteness as implicitly superior, the narrative underpinning the words is consistent.
Attractiveness seems to hinge significantly on a person’s pigment, which is to say that if a guy or gal is darker, the chances of them being considered attractive are far lower.
Whiteness (or paleness) is associated with purity. In East Asia this couldn’t be more true. In Japan specifically, light skin is viewed as compensatory, meaning other flaws can be overlooked as long as the person (most often a woman) is sufficiently white.
In summer, many women in Asia cover themselves from head to toe, lest they get dark under the powerful sun. Not a square inch of flesh is visible. Only their eyes.
One middle-aged Japanese man raved to me about the women of Tohoku and Hokkaido (northern regions of the country) because of how white they are.
A Western friend of mine went one step further. He eagerly told me about Chinese women and how their skin is the most delectable white in all of Asia, comparable to the color of milk.
There is only one avenue to equity, and that is spreading awareness and shifting the paradigm of color through persistent action.
The implications of lightness and darkness are historically rooted and therefore very difficult to simply tweak. But baby steps can create a path to a more all-embracing future.
This book is working towards that goal. While the word “colorism” isn’t explicitly printed anywhere in it, the message is “to combat that spirit and celebrate the differences we have.”
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