A story on the PRI radio show, The World, made much of the idea that this trend of skin whitening is not so much one of a long history as it is one of the cultural colonialism of the West.
I would suggest that that arrogance is itself evidence of the West's Cultural Colonialism.
How? Because historically, light skin was not "white" skin that supposedly mimicked Western Europeans or Euro-Americans.
It signified wealth. How? Because wealthy people did not labor in the marketplaces or in the fields. In other words, they had enough money, and servants, to do all of that for them. They themselves could engage in the more heady activities of politics, social policy, and the like.
Another cultural specificity that Euro-Americans just don't get? Fat babies. They don't get them. Pride in a fat baby? Don't call her fat, they say! That will give her a complex.
Beyond the practical stupidity of that statement--no, babies don't have that Euro-American obsession with being skinny, that's for adults--fat babies meant something very specific. That you had enough food to feed your baby. That your baby would then be healthy. And that because of that, you in turn must be if not wealthy, at least comfortable.
So before Euro-Americans go patting themselves on the back, again, for setting the "trend" for what constitutes desirable all over the world, maybe they should step back for a moment and consider the culture of which they speak.
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