Pass the Sunscreen
I know the color of our skin is the basis for almost everything that has happened to the people of the world. That and religion have been the cause of much strife and conflict, stereotyping, discrimination. You name it.
I just find it to be interesting how the ideas of long ago are still present in us today. For example, I read this book that was based in China many moons ago. In it, a woman born into a family of little means envied a girl she became friends with because of her lighter complexion. It meant that she was not out in the sun, in the fields working, much. The lighter your skin tone, the more privileged you appeared to be.
Today, I am friends with a guy of Indian descent. He hates the sun because it darkens his already dark skin. He despises getting any darker. I don't know why; after all, his tans usually come from visits to sunny places, not from manual labor in the hot sun, but I feel it has something to do with being "different" and not wanting to draw any more attention to that. If his skin gets darker, he will look more like something that he doesn't want to be.
In the black and Hispanic cultures, light-skinned verses dark-skinned is a big thing. Light-skinned deemed "better". Again, I take this from books I've read, things I've heard. I do not know first-hand. Yet, all this being said, I remember being a teenaged white girl wishing so badly that I could tan the way my darker-skinned sister could. I would burn trying to achieve what she did naturally. Still today, white girls go to tanning salons to get that darker look. They use lotions and sprays, whatever it takes, to look tan before the prom, before a big date. It's got to be a status symbol, right? Looks like you just got off of that yacht in the French Riviera.
There's a disconnect there: the darker want to be lighter, the lighter want to be darker. I always end up coming back to this quote from the movie Bulworth. For whatever reason, it has stuck with me since the one, and only, time that I saw the movie:
"All we need is a voluntary, free-spirited, open-ended program of procreative racial deconstruction. Everybody just gotta keep fuckin' everybody 'til they're all the same color."
It's going to happen one day. We will all be brown. Then I guess we'll just have religion to fight about.
I just find it to be interesting how the ideas of long ago are still present in us today. For example, I read this book that was based in China many moons ago. In it, a woman born into a family of little means envied a girl she became friends with because of her lighter complexion. It meant that she was not out in the sun, in the fields working, much. The lighter your skin tone, the more privileged you appeared to be.
Today, I am friends with a guy of Indian descent. He hates the sun because it darkens his already dark skin. He despises getting any darker. I don't know why; after all, his tans usually come from visits to sunny places, not from manual labor in the hot sun, but I feel it has something to do with being "different" and not wanting to draw any more attention to that. If his skin gets darker, he will look more like something that he doesn't want to be.
In the black and Hispanic cultures, light-skinned verses dark-skinned is a big thing. Light-skinned deemed "better". Again, I take this from books I've read, things I've heard. I do not know first-hand. Yet, all this being said, I remember being a teenaged white girl wishing so badly that I could tan the way my darker-skinned sister could. I would burn trying to achieve what she did naturally. Still today, white girls go to tanning salons to get that darker look. They use lotions and sprays, whatever it takes, to look tan before the prom, before a big date. It's got to be a status symbol, right? Looks like you just got off of that yacht in the French Riviera.
There's a disconnect there: the darker want to be lighter, the lighter want to be darker. I always end up coming back to this quote from the movie Bulworth. For whatever reason, it has stuck with me since the one, and only, time that I saw the movie:
"All we need is a voluntary, free-spirited, open-ended program of procreative racial deconstruction. Everybody just gotta keep fuckin' everybody 'til they're all the same color."
It's going to happen one day. We will all be brown. Then I guess we'll just have religion to fight about.
posted by Tracy at 6:56 AM
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