I never understood the prevalence of and the social pressure underlying skin bleaching until I encountered my aunt one night. She had a white mask all over her face that smelt strongly and she complained of tingling on her skin. It was her monthly ritual for her to bleach her face.
My aunt confessed that she bleached her skin because of her job. As a beautician, there are exceptional standards in personal grooming that must be met. Her appearance helps make a sale and influences a client’s continued loyalty to the salon.
She told me that nine out of ten of her client’s faces are bleached. Working women and married women make up the majority of her current clientele. They come in once a month and request a face bleach and facial; my aunt says the two treatments go hand in hand. Upon seeing their lightened skin, her client’s faces light up, and they seem to get an instant boost of confidence.
Bleach does not change skin colour—it lightens the fine hairs on the surface of the skin. Other creams are often used to lighten the skin itself.
Skin-lightening treatments attack the skin’s production of melanin that determines the colour of skin, hair and eyes. Skin-lightening products can contain hydroquinone or mercury, both of which can cause long-term harm both internally and externally. People risk their bodies when they lighten their skin.
So why do Sri Lankans in particular do it? What is it about our culture that makes us feel pressured to do so? And did anyone else I know feel compelled to lighten their skin? Does it start as a teenager?
The teenage years are the worst
A friend, Dishni, explained that during her school years (in the ’90s) all her peers yearned for lighter skin. White skin had been the ideal everyone aspired to. Whiter skin resulted in social validation and an increase in attention, from boys in particular. All of this led to a full surge in confidence.
Journalist Marisa Wikramanayake also remembered this occurring during her school days in the ’90s. She believes one of her high school friends had been very popular in part because she had a slim figure and fairer skin. It’s an idea often entrenched within the immediate family and its wider circle: she doesn’t remember herself or her sister being generally complimented as beautiful by relatives. Marisa believes it is because she and her sister had darker skin.
Though no one around her asked her to bleach her skin, she was aware of fairer skin being highly desirable; the bleaching being the elephant in the room, the unspoken means of achieving it. Everyone’s desire for fairer skin just could not be erased.
Upon moving to the USA for university, she very briefly considered bleaching her skin before deciding against it. She became aware of reports on why other people choose to do so, similar to why she had considered it: to find work, or to increase their social currency in a white supremacist society.
Advertising fuels the bleaching trend
I remember the omnipresence of Fair and Lovely ads on TV in the noughties. Originally intended for an Indian market, Fair and Lovely found a devoted audience in Sri Lanka too. Women flocked to this product and incorporated it into their daily skin care routine.
One of my history teachers commented on the trend and rightly called the ads “racist” and “discriminatory” because they perpetuated the need to change one’s skin colour and racial identity. It was a reminder that the problem affects many people of colour and is still prevalent.
His remarks also helped me see the variety of products that tapped into our culture’s urgency to lighten skin colour. Companies still take advantage of these inequalities, insecurities and disparities within society to push these harmful products. Vaseline even released a skin-whitening app on Facebook in India that enabled users to make their skin paler in their profile pictures.
Scaachi Koul’s article Some Of Your Fave Skin Care Companies Sell Skin Lightening Products catalogued Nivea’s racialised ad copy. In 2011, Nivea ran an ad with the tagline “Re-Civilise Yourself”, targeting Black men. In the Middle East, they released a deodorant with the tagline “White is Purity”. In the Philippines they released the Extra Whitening Cell Repair and Protect Body Milk.
Advertising understands the mentality that people who have fairer skin have greater social standing and opportunities. Advertising has capitalised on this insecurity and continues to perpetuate racist and discriminatory ideals to fuel their income.
The media isn’t helping matters
People are also impacted by the media. Sri Lankans love Hindi movies, and the actors in Hindi films are, for the most part, light-skinned.
During her days as a journalist for a Sri Lankan radio and TV broadcast network, Marisa heard her colleagues voicing their insecurity around their careers in TV. “We’re not that fair, so we are not going to get on TV,” they told her.
Quite often, fairer-skinned foreigners were given presenter roles they were not qualified for. In Australia, Marisa was told by a modelling agency that designers would never book or hire the darker-skinned girls, a fact often mirrored in Sri Lanka’s fashion industry as well.
In the piece The Price of Racism, Bengaluru-based dermatologist Dr Sujata Chandrappa states that people have a role model (usually an actor or actress) in their head that they aspire to look like. Audiences tend to mimic the representations they see on screen.
Bleaching has a negative, racist, colonial history
Given that the practice is rooted in racism, colourism and colonial beliefs, people who actively choose to lighten their skin should not be targeted or blamed for doing it. The blame needs to be shifted. Instead, the historical and social context behind the practice needs to be closely examined, deconstructed, and progressively rearranged.
As Neha Mishra and Donald Hall have stated, skin bleaching should never be considered superficial because it is assimilation into a “superior identity” that emphasises a deep-seated perception that fairer skin is beautiful and valuable.
Similarly, in the piece Your Blues Ain’t Like Mine: Bleaching vs. Tanning, Dr. Yaba Blay writes that lightening skin tone helps a person to “gain access to the social status reserved for Whites.” White supremacy has authority and standing over other racial and cultural groups, so, “Whiteness is invaluable”. Whiteness has been advertised as “human, civilized, beautiful and superior”. It is a point of comparison for other racial and cultural groups. On the contrary, Blackness has been labelled as “bestial, barbaric, ugly and inferior”. These oppositional characteristics have created systems of racism and colourism; it’s racism and colourism that are the underlying cause behind the practice of skin bleaching.
According to Dr. Blay, bleaching began in Elizabethan England. Women used chemicals to lighten their skin to increase their marriageability. India’s colonisation by several European powers including the Portuguese, Dutch and French occurred in the 15th–17th century and by the British in the 16th century. As European settlers flocked to India, they bought their white beauty ideals with them.
Like India, Sri Lanka has been colonised by the Portuguese, Dutch and British. Like India, Sri Lanka has been impacted by European beauty standards popularised by white rulers. Unlike India, Sri Lanka does not have a caste system; despite this, Sri Lanka does have a class system that closely resembles Britain’s class system. The upper classes usually have paler skin due to interracial marriages.
Perhaps this can be compared to ‘pigmentocracy’. Pigmentocracy still exists today; women bleach their faces to access this place of special “honour”. Women in Sri Lanka bleach their faces to access the opportunities available to the fair-skinned upper class.
The movement to end colourism
Recently, there has been a concentrated movement to dismantle colourism throughout South Asia: for example, three students from Austin launched the #unfairandlovely hashtag to encourage people to embrace their skin tone rather than lightening it, inspired by a project created by 21-year-old black student Pax Jones. Women of Worth, run by Kavitha Emmanuel, launched the Dark is Beautiful campaign in 2009 in hopes of reducing the stigma around dark skin. In 2013, Fatima Lodhi launched Pakistan’s first anti-colourism movement called Dark is Divine. Nayani Thiyagarajah, a Sri Lankan director, producer and documentary filmmaker in Toronto, launched her documentary Shadeism which focused on colourism in communities of colour.
South Asian representation has also started to increase in popular media. Unlike Deepika Padukone and Priyanka Chopra, Mindy Kaling is dark-skinned and her career has exploded in the US. Ironically enough, an actress that resembles her cannot be spotted in South Asian culture. South Asian cinema (including Sri Lankan cinema) still celebrates white skin and has not progressed beyond that mindset.
Diverse representation that takes a variety of skin shades into account aids the path to self-acceptance. Whiteness is still the paradigm of beauty and this should be tackled in order to end such harmful practices.
Changing mindsets
Dishni is hopeful because she has seen the old mindset chipped away at in the last decade or so. Parents and families seem less inclined to put this pressure on their children.
“I am a Sri Lankan-born Australian. I am proud of my skin colour, heritage, history and people,” she said.
My friend, Anushka Batuwanduwe, told me a similar story. She has never experienced insecurity about her skin colour. From a young age, Anushka’s mother called her “black beauty”, made her feel comfortable, and encouraged a sense of pride in her appearance.
“My skin colour is a part of me. This defines my background and identity and I think it’s really important to be proud of being a darker-skinned Sri Lankan,” she said.
Similarly, although my aunt engages in skin-lightening practices, she does not encourage her daughter to change her skin tone. She has supported her education so that she does not have to rely on her appearance to secure employment. She has ensured that her daughter does not need to suffocate her skin in bleach to raise and run a family.
In the same way the media needs to change, parents should also be embracing the beauty of all skin shades, and pass this thinking on to their children. As a society, we need to have conversations about strategically and systematically destroying colourism and the practices born through it. This is where it starts.
Cover image © Pax Jones via Instagram
About the author
Devana Senanayake is a Sri Lankan content specialist and multimedia journalist. She focuses on feminism, immigration, race, colonisation and marginalisation. She is interested in the celebration of diverse voices, experiences and projects run by people of colour.