The unattainable lightness of skin

When I was in make-up school, I made the mistake of applying a darker shade of foundation on my model. My teacher went to my station to inspect my work then pulled me aside. “Look at the mirror,” he said. “What do you see? You’ve made her face a shade darker than her actual skin tone.” I took a good look and noticed. It meant I had to remove everything and start all over again. “In the Philippines, it’s more forgivable to make someone seem lighter-skinned than they really are rather than darker,” my teacher continued. I agree. While I would not intentionally turn anyone into a floating head by applying a lighter shade of foundation, it’s true. Most women here want to be lighter-skinned.

This would explain the prevalence of whitening products. Every beauty brand has a whitening line in Asia, but not so much in the United States. When I go to mall restrooms I see women patting on white baby powder on their faces. When I turn on the TV there’s always a TVC promising lighter, whiter and fairer skin. BB creams are the rage too since they instantly lighten the whole face and cover blemishes. Whenever I post a BB cream review I can count on it to become a box office hit with my readers.

I will be the first to admit that I’m a consumer of these whitening products. In my case though, it’s more for evening out my skin tone because I want to lighten things like dark undereye circles, freckles and marks left behind by some stubborn pimples from eons ago. Due to my Chinese heritage my skin tone is already light as is and so I have no problems buying BB creams to match my face since they come in very light shades.

When I was shopping around for make-up to use for my professional artistry course, I was aghast at how hard it was to find darker shades of foundation for morena models. I must’ve bought the lightest and darkest foundation shades of at least three different brands over the counter and the darkest was always still too light for most of my models. Now they were not professional fashion models. These women were your average Filipinas who wanted to earn a little extra cash and so they would go in every time we had class so we could make them over for hours and hours.

I have nothing against people who want to have lighter skin or use products that promise such results. I’m just wondering why light skin has become the standard for beauty here in our country where the natural color is a warmer golden shade of tan (think Angel Aquino). I don’t know if you notice but usually one looks better with the color he or she is born with. Let’s take Michael Jackson for example. My 10-year old son actually commented that “Michael Jackson looked a lot better when he was brown,” as he was watching older music videos like Thriller, Billie Jean, etc. and I agree.