It seems that college women will melt if their faces are exposed to the light of day, even with a dense layer of smog shutting the actual sun out of view. Actually, the issue here is the fear of sun tans. Apparently Chinese girls prefer the whitest skin possible so as to more closely resemble the Western girls in advertisements. The question remains, why are the girls in advertisements mostly white-skinned?My roommate Ryan is studying this anthropological phenomenon. He is not actually enrolled in our language program, but he got a grant from UVA to study the desire to be white. I haven't seen any results yet, but he has said he will post comments to the blog.
Highlights of today include equipping myself with a badminton racquet for future athletic endeavors and taking a long nap.
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Don't ask me why, but the other night on PBS there was this show with entertaining commentary and skits by John Cleese and Elizabeth Hurley on the topic of beauty and image.
The two of them, and other experts, explained the varying trends of desiring to be tan or fair skinned over the decades.
Apparently a long time ago fair skin (white almost) was popular because it was a sign of aristocracy. The fact that you didn't have to work in the fields meant that you weren't exposed to sunlight - hence your white color. White=Wealthy.
Then the program explained that in biological terms, being fair skinned was healthy because it allowed potential mates to see any discolorations from jaundice (yellow hue to the skin) or other diseases which were reflected in skin color.
Tan bodies were a favorite in the 1980's, maybe because of a Hollywood-esque image that if you didn't have to work in the office building all day you would have enough time to just lay around in the sun and 'soak up some cosmic rays'.
Apparently the white skin color is being re-popularized (if that's a word). Why is it popular again? Maybe the answer is biological (although jaundice isn't much of a problem anymore, the program said even little maladies were reflected in the appearance of the face), maybe it is another shift in the times where the wealthy don't have to 'work in the fields' doing manual labor.
Just a thought...
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