“You Just Need to Be White to Win”

[marmar]

By Lambert Strether of Corrente.


“You just need to be white to win.” That’s the tagline, in English translation, for a TV ad pushing Snowz, a skin whitening cream from Seoul Secrets Thailand, a cosmetics firm, since withdrawn after the Seoul Secrets (no doubt accidental on purpose) uproar and moral panic. Here’s the ad; I don’t think you need more than the visuals:

(Skin whitening products are stacked up in drugstores all over Asia; they’re a $2 billion industry). What’s interesting to me — and this is going to be one of those superficial posts where, magpie-like, I collect and display a number of bright, shiny objects — is that the initial framing, which made its way from the Twitter all the way to the English-language media worldwide, is that the Seoul Secrets ad was racist. On the Twitter:

.....(snip).....

AP:

“Ewwwwwww,” [copy that] was the reaction of 28-year-old Jutamas Tritaruyanon, one of many to post their disapproval on Facebook.

“This ad is so obviously racist and another attempt to brainwash Thai women,” Jutamas, a Bangkok-based office worker, told AP. “They’re saying that being dark is ugly. It’s a narrow-minded and disgusting attitude.”

CNN:

A new Thai beauty ad claiming white skin is the key to success has unleashed a storm of criticism in Thailand, especially online, where people complain the ad perpetuates damaging, racist ideas.

And out into the aggregators. .............(more)

http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2016/01/you-just-need-to-be-white-to-win.html