Bangkok 12 noon. 45 degrees in the shade. While we are about to evaporate, a Thai girl with a hat, long sleeve and gloves goes by! After a few minutes another passes, and another. And another. Man, they don't have cold ... do they? Will they be sick, will it be fashion?
The mystery was solved in a hostel where we found a cream that someone forgot ... moisturizing and bleaching: WTF (wow uncle flipo) are covered to avoid sunbathing! And sorry? Do youWhitening cream? But what is it ??? Somebody explain it to me: while we spend the hours under the sun's rays, shrinking us to be brown, in Asia they are obsessed with white skin.
If there are people here who use self-tanning creams, they use bleaching agents there. If here at the first ray of the sun the rock goes out into the street and they become lizards, there they are covered to keep their skin as white as possible. If the mozzarella style in the west is not trendy, in Asia it is the most. Definitely, We are all crazy. For us this obsession of white skin was another cultural shock of the trip.
But, why do they want to be blanquitos? Well, the reason is what your grandmother, your great grandmother and the previous grandmothers would tell you: White skin is synonymous with beauty and social status.
Brown skin is associated with field work and humble work. This story is not new: it was said that the aristocrats had blue blood because, being so white, the doll's veins became very evident (and light blue). And not because they ate armies of smurfs, but because they could afford to be at home, substantially without sticking a stick to the water.
In Asia the idea is the same: if you are brown you are a peasant, if you are white, you have a high social status, you have a better job, more money, you are more attractive, more ...
Unfortunately, apart from being weird, The use of these bleaching products is dangerous: creams used to reduce one or two shades of the skin's natural color contain substances such as mercury, bleach and hydroquinone which obviously are harmful to health. Even so, this "classism", to call it somehow, is socially approved and the great beauty brands such as Gilette, Garnier, Nívea, L'oreal are being lined up because this fashion is followed from India to Japan.
We who are white-transparent, here in the Mediterranean we are not cool, but in Asia ... and in Asia they looked at us like some Hollywood stars, and they asked us on thousands of occasions to take pictures with us. Surely it happened to you too!
In short, both who spends the hours under the sun's rays burning their skin to be more handsome, and who uses whitening creams ... we are fatal, don't you think?
