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?

[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...