Embodiment and social Theory:

Embodiment and social Theory:

On Skin whitening

‘Contemporary sociology has little to say about the most obvious fact of human existence, namely that human beings have, and to some extent are, bodies’ (Turner, 1996, p. 60).

Skin Whitening as a Matter of (Eurocentric) Beauty

• Mainstream critical discourse on beauty often neglects the issue of race.
• Notions of modern beauty are embedded in sexual politics as well as racial politics.
• Women are inundated with an onslaught of daily messages that their value lies almost singularly on their level of physical attractiveness, but this 'physical attractiveness' has been constructed to blatantly exclude women of colour.
• Modern standards of beauty represent a legacy of a colonial past - an enduring social hierarchal structure based on the favouritism of white skin and European looking features i.e. pigmentocracy.
• A manifestation of postcolonial habitus (Bourdieu) - internalization of pigmentocratic beauty ideals.

• Bio- and disciplinary power (Foucault) - body evolves into a site of surveillance and struggle upon which power is exercised using displinary practices - beauty regimes - the Patriarchy exercising its power through the domination of women's bodies - also, internalized racism - skin whitening.
• Valorization of pigmentocratic values that glorifies Eurocentric beauty archetypes are perpetuated by the media - lack of diversity in popular culture.
• When women of colour are represented, they are women who are able to 'racially pass' with their fair brown skin and vaguely Caucasian features - otherwise, they are made to do so eg. in ads, women of colour are photoshopped to fit into Eurocentric physiognomy such as having smaller/sharper noses and lighter coloured hair and eyes

Skin Whitening and Commercialized Beauty

• Skin whitening practises as embedded not only in systems of colonialism and male dominance but also of capitalism and consumerism.
• The market is currently estimated to be worth $5.6 billion in Asia alone, has about 60 million consumers throughout the Indian and African subcontinents and exports to all 24 countries in the Middle East.
• Democratization of beauty - supposedly everyone can be beautiful - in an effort to tap into women's increasing consumer power, this 'democratic' vision of beauty commodifies the rhetoric of female empowerment - beauty as an individual choice, female agency only in terms of 'purchasing' beauty products,
• Because beauty i.e. lighter skin is now achievable, it should and must be achieved.
• Skin whitening sold as a 'technology of the self' (Foucault) - a technology to improve one's body to attain a sense of 'perfection'.

• "The ideological wedding of science and transcendence."
• Darker skin is pathologized - lightening of skin framed as a way of 'fixing' darker skin.
• White or fair skin is not just 'healthy', but ultimately, what is 'normal'.
• White or fair skin constructed as both the paragon of feminine beauty - which is attainable - suggests non-white or dark skin is more than merely a show of inferiority - it is also an act of transgression, an act of deviance in and of itself, an 'illegality'. (Hall)
• 'Yearning for whiteness' translates into an act of disciplining one's body so as to fit into a society where white is the norm, and an act of punishing one's body for not fitting into a society where white is 'right'.

Beyond Beauty

An Embodied Resistance?

• An extensive study found that for women of colour skin whitening is often 'a personal matter which relates mostly to the improving one's social standing' - WoC were fundamentally motivated, not at the prospect of being white, but by the status which they can gain from embodying whiteness.
• 'Impression management' (Goffman) - for WoC who partake in skin whitening, it is the managing of the impression of whiteness (to achieve upward mobility and assimilation in a world where they are defined as inferior), the impression of beauty (which promises a sense of self-validation and self-worth in the same world where their value is measured against how they fare aesthetically) and the impression of whiteness as beauty and beauty as whiteness (because skin tone remains a defining character of beauty and beauty as significant capital for women).

• Skin whitening is not just a manifestation of postcolonial habitus but a deep understanding of it and reaction to it.
• Neither helpful to position skin whitening in terms of beauty by casting women as superficial beings whose lives revolve around the pursuing of unachievable perfection, nor to critique as 'a symptom of racial self-hatred' or 'a traitorous complicity to oppressive norms'.
• Skin whitening as an 'active strategy' employed by women of colour to 'counteract their subjugation' and 'reclaim power' - not passive victims of systems of inequality.
• CAUTION! Women of colour, although empowered to control their bodies and their embodiment through skin whitening practices, still pattern themselves on the external control of patriarchal beauty and racist standards.

• WoC succumbing to the social structures, whose influence they are attempting to thwart, and to existing gender and pigmentocratic hierarchies they hope to challenge.
• It is going to take the dismantling of the larger systems of Patriarchy and white racism because as long as societies experience ongoing colonization, capitalism and male dominance, skin whitening as both a beauty regime and social/economic capital is always going to exist.
• Until then, skin whitening will also represent an embodied resistance by women of colour; an ironic attempt at corrupting established norms, achieving equality, validate their existence, and to finally being seen as full human beings.

• A controversial practise because it touches upon the embodiment of pre-existing constructions around race that is linked to racist practices of inferiorization and exclusion - certain groups of individuals continue to be defined as 'Other'. (Said)
• These groups are forced to find ways to disguise their 'Otherness'.
• Complicates the dominant dialogue on skin whitening as simply an aspiration to be beautiful or become white, or a rejection of ethnic identity.
• Skin whitening as 'reflexive embodiment'. (Crossley)
• Easy to cast women of colour who practise skin whitening as frivilous and 'ideologically manipulated' but for many women of colour, it is the consciousness of one's place in a highly racialized society that skin whitening sets itself as an active strategy employed in navigating through a world that is further divided along 'coloured' and 'gendered' lines.

• Negotiation of identities in a global context where difference in embodiment (dark skin) gives just cause for oppression - about competing for the advantages that comes only with whiteness.
• In post-colonial societies, resources are divided by race and colour (in addition to gender and class) - it is white men (and women) who reap a disproportionate amount of the benefits.
• Having lighter skin embody an emulation of whiteness and the closer one is to looking white, she is likelier to be afforded the treatment reserved to white folks - colourism/skin colour stratification.
• This translates to advantages in the marriage market, education gap, differences in employabiity and consequently of thousands of dollars in yearly income as well as level of occupational prestige and also housing access, ownership and segregation - stunts the opportunity for accumulation of wealth and mobility.