Young Red Haired Girl With A Pale Skin On The Sandy Shore

Skin whitening products have remained prominent over time, often due to historical beliefs and perceptions about fair skin. Skin whitening products sales across the world grew from $40 to $43 billion in 2008. In South and East Asian countries, light skin has traditionally been seen as more attractive and a preference for lighter skin remains prevalent. In ancient China and Japan, for example, pale skin can be traced back to ancient drawings depicting women and goddesses with fair skin tones. In ancient China, Japan, and Southeast Asia, pale skin was seen as a sign of wealth. Thus, skin whitening cosmetic products are popular in East Asia. 4 out of 10 women surveyed in Hong Kong, Malaysia, the Philippines and South Korea used a skin-whitening cream, and more than 60 companies globally compete for Asia's estimated $18 billion market. Changes in regulations in the cosmetic industry led to skin care companies introducing harm free skin lighteners. This also occurs in South Asian countries, and in India, pale skin is considered more attractive. In India, dark skin is sometimes associated with a lower class status and some people resort to skin bleaching to achieve a skin color they consider more socially desirable. In Japan, the geisha was well known for their white painted faces, and the appeal of the bihaku (美白), or "beautiful white", ideal leads many Japanese women to avoid any form of tanning. There are exceptions to this, with Japanese fashion trends such as ganguro emphasizing almost black skin. Skin whitening is also not uncommon in Africa, and several research projects have suggested a general preference for lighter skin in the African-American community. In contrast, one study on men of the Bikosso tribe in Cameroon found no preference for attractiveness of females based on lighter skin color, bringing into question the universality of earlier studies that had exclusively focused on skin color preferences among non-African populations.
It has been found that, on average, women of a given ancestry have a lighter skin tone than men of the same ancestry and that there is a sexual preference for paleness in women and darkness in men in many cultures throughout the world. In his foreword to Peter Frost's 2005 Fair Women, Dark Men, University of Washington sociologist Pierre L. van den Berghe stated, "Although virtually all cultures express a marked preference for fair female skin, even those with little or no exposure to European imperialism, and even those whose members are heavily pigmented, many are indifferent to male pigmentation or even prefer men to be darker." He elaborated that popular media in the Western world has repeatedly associated blacks with "advantageous stereotypes," as much as negative ones, such as "myths that praise their athletic aptitudes amongst many other things, and often depict them as males of superior genetic inheritance".
Significant exceptions to a preference for lighter skin started to appear in Western culture mid-20th century. Though sun-tanned skin used to be associated with the sun-exposed manual labor of the lower-class, the associations became dramatically reversed during this time – a change usually credited to the trendsetting French woman Coco Chanel making tanned skin seem fashionable, healthy, and luxurious. Today, though a preference for lighter skin remains prevalent in the United States, many within the country regard tanned skin as both more attractive and healthier than pale skin. Western mass media and popular culture continued to reinforce negative stereotypes about dark skin, but pale skin has become associated with indoor office work while tanned skin has become associated with increased leisure time, sportiness and good health that comes with wealth and higher social status. Studies indicating that the degree of tanning is directly related to how attractive a young woman is have also emerged. The election of an African-American United States President and the financial success of many African-American singers and actors has challenged a number of stereotypes associated with darker skin tones. There has also been an increase in the perceived attractiveness of dark-skinned women.