Here are some ads for the mei bai (beautifying and whitening, notice how these two things are lumped together) products that are wildly popular in Taiwan. Notice how a face of a Caucasian supposedly says enough .
Towards these I have a very visceral and emotionally loaded reaction. My sister and I spent most of our lives resisting pressure from family and peers to also mei bei, on the ground that if we do we are just perpetuating a Western hegemony already too deeply internalized by so many (we didn't have words for it before, but that was the idea).
The first time that our unattended skin color were accepted was when the family decided that we have lived abroad for long enough that we count more as Asian Americans than Asians.
No comments:
Post a Comment