White Skin, Whiter Skin … Ghost

Who doesn’t marvel at the Thai culture of outdoor laborers covering the last square millimeter of skin to avoid a single ray of sunlight. It may be freaking hot, still, even the eyelid has to be covered. While the ad industry pressures women to whiten up.

You may like chocolate brown skin – but you’re an outsider. Because as a dark Thai you’d be looked down on as someone who is forced to work outdoors and therefore coming from a poor family with an utterly low status. White Thai skin is not only a must, it’s an obsession.

But there is help as we all know. Skin whitening capsules, creams, tonics, soaps, pills and even deodorants are big business around here – such big business that the adored color of white becomes a new black for many: Some desperate Thai women use a cancer drug as a skin whitener.

Thai Dermatologists had to issue a warning over using leukemia drugs to look whiter, reported The Nation. Saying the consumption of leukemia pills might have adverse effects.

Might have adverse effects … Mighty vanity, sometimes you want to tear your hair. How much more obvious can the obvious be.

“If you don’t have leukemia, then taking this cancer drug might destroy perfectly healthy cells and tissues within your body,” says dermatologist Dr. Pravit Asawanonda of Chulalongkorn University.

Pravit had received lots of questions from patients about the efficacy of using the leukemia drug to whiten the skin. Some saying that they had witnessed people turning paler after taking the tablets.

Pravit explains leukemia patients develop white spots, not a whiter complexion, from taking the drug. 

Pravit says even beauty clinics recommend the questionable technique and he furthermore warned against the use of gold or silver nano-particles in facial treatment, saying they could cause severe allergic reactions.

White skin at any price. Call the attitude deeply racist. Fact is, many Thai women are easy pray of also countless generic skin whitener producers who mix anything together and sell it cheap in the name of paradise looming.

Many are left with scathed faces and ruined lives while the message on Thai television is that only woman – and, yep, men – with fair skin are successful.

And you have to be successful to be able to afford the very expensive good lighteners. The black market therefore flourishes. And that can’t be controlled, while banned products reappear under new names.

If you or a friend can’t keep the hands off whitening stuff, first symptoms are redness and itching before the face will never ever be the same again.

Like bleached Khun Panya’s – whose skin got ghostly white:





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March 3, 2009 | Filed Under Fashion & Style, Health, Body & Mind, The Thai Mind 

Comments

4 Responses to “White Skin, Whiter Skin … Ghost”

  1. Robin on March 3rd, 2009 7.15 pm

    This is just heartbreaking and frustrating to behold. Caucasion people using tanning beds and tanning lotions to darken themselves and Asian people using chemicals, drugs and lotions to lighten themselves – it’s very sad that such a large percentage of humankind craves skin different from what they were born with. Meanwhile, the cosmetics industry seems to laugh all the way to the bank.

  2. Catherine on March 7th, 2009 2.48 pm

    Such a shame. Dark skinned Asian women are beautiful but here they are, going to dangerous lengths to be lighter skinned.

    The West has its own health snafus when it comes to beauty products.

    Both sides have lost the plot.

  3. JJ on March 7th, 2009 7.44 pm

    I prefer the darker nipples and such that come with darker skin.

  4. Mariyah on June 30th, 2009 9.38 am

    This is just heartbreaking!

    Even here in Singapore, I am constantly shocked by the amount of skin creams that have an added whiting element.

    I never see this back home. If anything, it’s the exact opposite.

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