White is beautiful

Every time there is some talk about black people straightening their hair or Asian people having cosmetic eyelid surgery, there is always somebody expressing concern for those poor people so brainwashed by the dominant white ideals of beauty that they feel the need to change themselves to look more white instead of accepting themselves as they are, yadda yadda yadda...

Funnily enough, I have never heard a similar argument applied to white people trying to get a tan. Even though in the long run it's way more dangerous than straightening hair, and possibly also than eyelid surgery (depends on how much you tan and how white you are to begin with).

Not that we need even more busybodies trying to analyze tanning as white people's self-loathing in silly magazines. What bothers me more is that it is not considered to be politically incorrect to disapprove of white skin, at least in the US. It's usually done with a facial expression of disgust and using the word "pasty".

It's weird. One can - sort of, and fairly carefully - express a preference for people's looks that favors some race or leaves another race out. One is not supposed to express it in the form of disgust for some racial feature, at least not unless one wants to be banished from polite society and be left without a dessert. The only racial feature that you are still allowed to say "eeew" about is white skin, at least for as long as you are disapproving of the color of fair-skinned white people as opposed to the color of all white people.

This is kind of weird, considering that everyone probably knows about skin cancer and its connection to sun exposure nowadays.

Maybe next time somebody says something about pasty skin I will either ask them "don't you find that white is beautiful" or chew them out for racism.

I have no problem with people either tanning themselves (it's their problem and there is no second-hand tan to worry about, as opposed to second-hand smoke) or preferring tanned sex partners. It's just the strong and public disapproval for white skin that piises me off - when people tell others that they are too white when they would not think of telling anyone that they are too dark.

(This problem is fairly rare in Finland for the obvious reasons, but not completely non-existent.)