Pale Skin and Status Anxiety

[kent_allard_jr]

Pale skin is considered beautiful, at least in some areas of the world, like China and, according to the clip, the rest of the East Asian world. Dark skin means you labor in the hot sun, thus are poor, thus undesirable. I know this kind of skin-tone prejudice was common in India as well, hell it seems almost universal before modern times (for women at least, men may be different), perhaps for the same reason.

It must say something about the West, today, that we have tanning salons everywhere. Perhaps it's an exception that proves the rule -- in today's environment dark skin, not light, is sign of leisure, of time for the beach and the UV-lights -- or perhaps we see it as a sign of good health? Not that good health isn't a class marker; as other Fallows posts have noted, obesity is very closely linked to status in the United States. Still, in America today, attractiveness is associated with effort, rather than the lack of it, which is progress I suppose. It's still somewhat oppressive -- the financial consultants in the last link sound loathsome to me -- but I guess meritocratic oppression is better than the aristocratic type.

Comments

[slackwench.livejournal.com]

I remember Ralph Nader making fun of Michael Moore for being fat at some point and others pointing out that the downtrodden lower classes that Nader purports to represent are on the whole much more overweight than upper crust types.

[avram]

The same factors are at play with body fat. When food was expensive and 90% of the population were manual laborers, fat was a sign of wealth and leisure, and was attractive. Nowadays, when carb-laden foods are cheap and 90% of people work behind desks, a thin, sickly person is more attractive than a healthy fat person.

[womzilla.livejournal.com]

What does the phrase "meritocratic oppression" have to do with modern America, which is as class-bound, or more class-bound, than most traditional aristocracies?

[wellgull.livejournal.com]

Well, there's the meaning I don't think he intended -- that we're oppressed by the nigh-universal (mis-)perception that America is somehow meritocratic...

[kent-allard-jr.livejournal.com]

Pretty much that's how I feel. Also that maintaining status requires a waking-to-bedtime grind. It's better than sneering at people for their pedigree, I suppose, but not by much.

[kent-allard-jr.livejournal.com]

America is class bound, but it's snobbery isn't bound up in questions of pedigree, even if the latter has a huge effect on one's class, more so than many other Western nations these days. No one looks down on folks for having poor parents, in fact it's a point of pride (see the financial consultants, above). You can't be born into today's status markers, for the most part; you have to earn them, even if earning them is much easier for the well-to-do than the poor.

[wellgull.livejournal.com]

I would definitely disagree about the extent to which you can be born into American status markers. Sure, it's possible to fall from class position, but class mobility is way down, and (even networking effects aside) people from high-status backgrounds have a vastly smoother road to the status positions in our working life, and almost guaranteed access to the non-working parts. (Showing up at art gallery openings is absolutely something you can be born to.) I grew up around plenty of ridiculously privileged kids (someday I should tell you about smacking the heir of the Bechtel corporation with a pillow) and believe me, status is very much inherited...

[peacewood.livejournal.com]

A pretty college classmate of mine was from Vietnam, and this subject came up once when we were talking. She was amused at the fact that all the rich farangs (foreigners) were invariably picking up the dark-skinned and tanned women, and she and her friends all wondered why they all went for the ugly girls...