What price glamour? A hard lesson in Asia
- From: pluto <pluto@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Tue, 02 May 2006 00:20:03 +0800
What price glamour? A hard lesson in Asia
By Thomas Fuller International Herald Tribune
MONDAY, MAY 1, 2006
MAKHAM KHU, Thailand Neighbors gawk and children yell, "ghost!" The manager
of the restaurant where Panya Boonchun worked simply told her she was
fired.
The cream that she applied to her face and neck was supposed to transform
her into a white-skinned beauty, the kind she saw on page after page in
women's magazines and on television.
But rather than lighten her complexion, the illegally produced lotion she
bought in a local grocery store near this village in southeastern Thailand
disfigured her skin into an unsightly patchwork of albino pink and dark
brown, a condition that doctors say might be irreversible.
At a time when whiter skin is being aggressively marketed across Asia as
beautiful and healthy, Panya's case illustrates the lengths that some women
will go to change their complexions - and the dangers that this sometimes
entails.
The vast selections of skin-whitening creams on supermarket and pharmacy
shelves are testament to an industry that has flourished over the past
decade, with 4 out of 10 women in Hong Kong, Malaysia, the Philippines,
South Korea and Taiwan now using some kind of skin-whitening cream,
according to a survey conducted by Synovate, a market research company.
The skin-whitening craze, which runs parallel to the global trend of
cosmetic surgery and botox injections, is not just for the face. It
includes creams that whiten darker patches of skin in armpits and "pink
nipple" lotions that bleach away brown-colored pigment.
Women buy sunscreen creams to wear to the office in case they are struck by
stray rays while commuting, the modern equivalent of the huge parasols that
servants once carried to shield their masters from the intense Asian sun.
And while many if not most skin-whitening creams are safe, doctors,
consumer groups and government officials are reporting dangerous
consequences of the white-is-beautiful trend: instead of treating
blemishes, women are applying potent creams in large and harmful doses.
Cheap black-market products with powerful but illegal bleaching agents are
also selling briskly throughout the poorer parts of south and Southeast
Asia.
"I have a lot of complaints - with photographs - which show that before the
cream is used the face is fine and then after it looks like it's been
roasted in the oven," said Darshan Singh, the manager for Malaysia's
National Consumer Complaints Center, a nonprofit group in Kuala Lumpur.
Thailand's Food and Drug Administration has published a list of 70 skin-
whitening creams circulating illegally around the country. Indonesian
officials have identified more than 50 banned cosmetics.
But there are also questions about widely used legitimate creams. Some
doctors say that hydroquinone, prescribed for years by dermatologists
around the world to remove blemishes, may be cancerous, especially if used
over an extended period of time in large doses.
Hydroquinone, which is also used in photo-processing materials, has been
shown to cause leukemia in mice and other animals. The European Union
banned the ingredient from cosmetics in 2001 but it remains widely
available in prescription drugs or in bootleg creams in many parts of the
developing world. It is also sold in the United States as an over-
the-counter drug with potency of less than 2 percent.
Two doctors recently published an article in a European medical journal
last year calling the long-term side effects of hydroquinone-based creams a
"potential time bomb."
Sociologists have long debated why Asians, who are divided by everything
from language to religion to ethnicity, share a deeply held cultural belief
that lighter skin is more attractive.
One commonly repeated rationale is that a lighter complexion is associated
with wealth and higher education levels because those from lower social
classes, laborers and farmers, are more exposed to the sun and thus have
darker complexions.
Another theory is linked to the waves of lighter-skinned conquerors,
whether the Moguls from Central Asia or the colonizers from Europe, whose
complexions became the standard for attractiveness.
"The success of the skin whiteners signifies that the Western concept of
beauty in terms of skin color has finally seeped down to the lower
classes," said Randy David, a sociologist at the University of the
Philippines.
The paradox today is that the descendants of European colonizers flock to
Asia's beaches to tan their skin just as vigorously as Asian women shun the
sun.
"Every Thai girl thinks that if she has white skin the money will come and
the men will come," said Nithiwadi Phuchareuyot, a doctor at a skin clinic
in Bangkok who dispenses a range of products and treatments to lighten
skin. "The movie stars are all white-skinned - and everyone wants to look
like a superstar."
In Thailand, as in other countries in the region, the stigma of darker skin
is rooted in language. One common insult is "tua dam," or black body, a
rude term to degrade someone of lower social standing. Along the same lines
are "e dam" (black girl) or "dam tap pet" (black like a duck's liver).
Films and advertising also clearly have a role in promoting the idea that
whiter skin is more beautiful. The runaway success of South Korean soap
operas across the region has made its lighter-skinned stars emblems of
Asian beauty.
Advertisements for skin-whitening products promote whiter skin as glowing
and healthier. Olay, a popular brand, has a product called "white
radiance." L'Oréal markets products called "white perfect."
In a survey carried out in June 2004 by Synovate, 61 percent of respondents
in Hong Kong, Malaysia, the Philippines, South Korea and Taiwan said they
felt they looked younger with a fair complexion. Half of Filipino women, 45
percent of Hong Kong women and 41 percent of Malaysian women said they were
currently using a skin-whitening product.
There are small groups of people in Asia who seem to prefer tanned skin. In
Japan, young women commonly referred to as "Shibuya girls," after the Tokyo
neighborhood they hang out in, have been regular patrons of tanning salons
for a decade.
But they are an asterisk in Japanese society and indeed in Asia over all.
"Everybody else basically wants white skin," said Leeyong Soo, the
international fashion coordinator at Vogue Nippon, the Japanese edition of
the fashion magazine. "People might say to you when you come back from a
holiday, 'Oh you have a tan.' But it's not necessarily complimentary."
Last year 62 new skin-whitening products were introduced in supermarkets or
pharmacies across the Asia-Pacific region, according to Datamonitor, a
market research firm, accelerating a trend that has seen an average of 56
new products launched annually over the past four years.
These products work in various ways. Some are based on active ingredients
like hydroquinone, mulberry extract, licorice extract, kojic acid or
arbutin, and they inhibit the formation of melanin, or skin pigment. Others
are acids that remove old skin and reveal the newer, lighter skin
underneath.
One problem, say doctors, is that the most effective but risky
skin-bleaching agents are often the cheapest, like mercury-based
ingredients or hydroquinone, which in Thailand sells for about $20 per
kilogram, compared to highly concentrated licorice extract, which sells for
about $20,000 a kilo.
Last year, Wiete Westerhof, a dermatologist who founded the Netherlands
Institute for Pigment Disorders in Amsterdam, and T.J. Kooyers, a Dutch
chemist, wrote a commentary in the Journal of Cosmetic Dermatology calling
for more research into the hazardous side effects of hydroquinone.
"The long-term risks of skin malignancy from topical hydroquinone should no
longer be ignored," they wrote. "All recent evidence from the literature
indicates that the use of hydroquinone as a skin lightening agent should be
stopped completely."
"We are of the opinion that it is a potential time bomb," Westerhof and
Kooyers wrote.
Doctors, some of whom have stopped prescribing hydroquinone, say it remains
one of the most widely used chemicals to bleach skin.
"It's very, very commonly used," said Anil Ganjoo, a dermatologist in New
Delhi and the president of the Indian Association of Dermatologists,
Venereologists and Leprologists. "Almost every anti-pigment treatment uses
hydroquinone."
Thada Piamphongsant, the president of the Thai Society of Cosmetic
Dermatology and Surgery, said he believed that about half of all Thai
dermatologists prescribe creams with hydroquinone. He stopped prescribing
it a decade ago when he noticed patients with redness and itching and with
more serious side effects like ochronosis, the appearance of very dark
patches of skin that are difficult to remove.
Some patients also develop leukoderma, where the skin loses the ability to
produce pigment, resulting in patches of pink like those on Panya's face
and neck.
When Panya first began using the cream, which was packaged under the name
"3 Days" and cost the equivalent of $1, she said she was very happy with
the results.
Her skin started itching, but she tolerated it because her complexion
lightened considerably. Customers in the restaurant where she sang Thai
folk songs gave her bigger tips, she said.
But when her face became blotchy, two months after she began using the
cream, her life fell apart. Her boss told her she could no longer sing at
the restaurant because she was unsightly.
Today she is broke and broken- hearted.
"I never look in the mirror anymore," she said, sobbing during an
interview.
Last month, she told her story on a Thai television program, breaking down
as she described how she lost her job and ruined her face.
Just before she was introduced, the announcer on the program ran through a
list of the show's sponsors, including a cream called "White Beauty."
"Use this cream," the announcer said. "It gives you expert treatment."
http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/05/01/news/skin.php
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