Nadinola Bleaching Cream

Beauty is an important aspect of many women’s lives, often dictating their everyday behaviours. Women are held to narrow, unrealistic expectations of what they should look like; these expectations being portrayed through beauty ideals and trends. Although these trends, and the advertisements they are promoted through, seem relatively harmless, they can often reinforce racism and become their own system of oppression. Throughout cultures, dark-skin is seen as unwanted and unappealing, whereas light-skin is valued and privileged. This white supremacist ideal is propagated through these various beauty trends and their advertising, inseminating privilege towards lighter skin shades. The beauty trend of using skin-bleaching creams to lighten one’s

Dina Gerdeman’s article discusses how the cosmetic industry in India has created a stereotype in which individuals with lighter skin tones are more acceptable and successful in comparison to those with darker skin tones. The media has portrayed this image persistently despite social activists arguing against the implications. Even though many campaigns have been created to combat this stereotype, the March 2016 case author of “Fair & Lovely vs. Dark is Beautiful,” Rohit Deshpande says, “…if you look at whether it’s done anything to affect the sales of the product category, the answer is no. This is a big market by any standards, and it’s growing exponentially” (para. 12). By the cosmetic industry’s perspective, “The government

This alone was reason enough for envy and hatred” (Packer 179). The “envy and hatred” blacks bear towards white people is due to the prevailing elegance the whites seem to radiate. For a fourth grader, the smallest thing such as someone’s hair is deemed sufficient to cultivate belligerent feelings toward that person. Such encouragement fuels prejudices and eventually result in racism. Often the society and the environment in which children are raised pass down these prejudices. The Anti-Defamation League wrote in an article, “Blacks and others are seen by racists as merely subhuman, more like beasts than men.”

Participants in the study reported feelings of inadequacy in comparison to their lighter skinned counterparts in everything from school competitions to mate selection. These feelings of inadequacy remained prevalent from childhood through adulthood. Media also plays a key role in how the skin tone bias is perpetuated. Rap and Hip-Hop music videos often portray lighter skinned women as the love interest of the main character or the woman the male finds sexually desirable (Wallace, Townsend, Glasgow, & Ojie, 2011). Movies and television programs targeted towards African Americans may also have a light skinned woman as the successful, attractive character with a juxtaposing character who is darker, loud, obnoxious, and often fits into the “sassy sidekick” trope. A popular Black situational comedy in the 1990s, Martin, was a prime example of this (Walter et al., 1992). The main character’s girlfriend Gina, was a successful, beautiful lighter skinned woman and her best friend, Pam, was dark skinned and often the recipient of Martin’s jokes about her appearance. Exposure to these repeated stereotypes for Black women only furthers the notion that light skin is somehow superior to dark skin. This could mean that for African American women, having darker skin is a risk factor for developing body dissatisfaction.

As stated above, African-American women have been subjected to measure themselves against white women. White women are viewed, in this society and since the beginning of the concept of race, as the epitome of beauty. Logically, African-American women attempt to emulate the white standard. This creates an inferiority complex, because the epitome of beauty is white woman, than any other race can be deemed as inferior; this deteriorates African-American women’s self-worth. To remedy worthlessness, many body modification techniques have been made to fully mimic white women in terms of beauty. This emulation still is being done and it is continuous, because of the psychological ‘white fantasization .

Such advertisements as these left little wonder as to what was thought of concerning the Negro in America, most specifically, the slave. The fact that these men and women were branded with the names of their owners intensifies the assertion that they were thought of as property.

Before the ideas were centralized and incorporated into American society, these ideas were stemmed from Western ideas about the African community. There is a constant flood of visuals depicting half-naked African individuals staring into the eyes of the camera man while several other Caucasians are viewed as “supporting”. The stances of

In “The roots of racism,” according to Lance Selfa, the origin of racism began with the growth of slavery. The latter was initially used for profit means only, free from racist ideas, as it was a cheaper alternative for labor; however, it eventually became an ethical and racial issue. Mass media, that once was a vehicle to spread culture and competent journalism, began to be used to reinforce racist stereotypes and black subordination in relation to white people. New black characters began to rise, inside and outside of the screen, portrayed in degrading roles linked with their dark skin color. For the most part, this negative association has remained unchanged through the years, if not inside films and books, inside the public’s subconscious.

Because of blacks’ marginality at the time in economics and politics, white Americans, including white businesses, believed they could malign African Americans. This helps to explain the use of derogatory advertisings using insulting black images during this period. Some white companies as a part of their regular advertising featured blacks with exaggerated physical characteristics in their

One such example is the tobacco industry aiming at African Americans. Tobacco advertisements in the 1950’s and 1960’s were all about the normality and inclusion of smoking cigarettes, white people sitting comfortably in their middle class homes, surrounded by friends and families, these advertisements were designed to target the average 1950’s person. This technique had proven successful in gaining white consumers to buy certain brands, such as Camel, this audience desired and looked up to these images of nice, comfortable lives that the people in the advertisements were living.

In today’s society people openly express how they feel on a situation. In the early 1600’s, African Americans were torn away from their homes and families and sold into slavery. Those who believe African Americans are one of the most mistreated races support their claim by using history. They also use evidence presented to the public by the media to back up their claim. In the article “Is Racism Still Alive in America? That’s Affirmative” by Eric Cooper, this article goes into details about whether racism still exists in today’s culture. There is evidence of what people believe is racism. The article allows the audience to decide for themselves whether racism still exists in today’s society. “Most masters treated their slaves as they would their livestock, interested only in the work they could do. Blacks were forced to adapt to extremely difficult working and living conditions”

The arrival of African slaves, sold in the plantations of colonial America, definitely triggered a superior-inferior relationship and mentality between “the whites” and “the blacks”. This present-day culture, resulting from a society of masters and slaves, has struggled against central concepts deeply rooted in the nations past .With strong cultural values on racial discrimination, the path towards the concept of racism in America was a vital moment in the course of the nation’s history. Social concepts and attitudes could not be altered overnight, but it can be altered. Indeed, in the quest for social progress, the struggle for equality has gone a long way, with black Americans now holding high-ranking

Could she get him away? Would he fall for that long, wavy beautiful hair? Why take chances?” The language employed in the Hi-Ja hair advertisement was intended to provoke shame among African American women and instill fear of competition from more glossy haired, beautiful women. Advertisers intentionally employed this technique to convince anxious female readers that they needed to buy more beauty products in order to keep their men happy and faithful. Additionally, when describing the Hi-Ja hair cream, the advertisers were careful to include that the product was white in color. The advertiser’s decision to include this seemingly insignificant detail painfully reveals the racialized nature of early twentieth-century African American beauty culture and advertising. African American beauty advertisements overwhelmingly correlated lighter skin and straightened hair “with femininity, beauty, and romantic

When Dr. Gooding played the commercial where the white man talked to the group of kids I started to laugh. Nothing about the commercial was funny, but what was funny was how blind I can be. As we analyzed the video, multiple things that I would have never noticed before stood out to me. We talked about how they made the white little girl seem so cute, while they portrayed the black little boy as silly. They also made another white little girl seem very intelligent, and the black little boy as annoying. It is happening all around us. The media is filled with allusions of diversity, while there really is not any. White people are always portrayed as better than colored

The idolization of lighter skin colour that has occurred within black communities within America, as mentioned earlier, stems from colonization and has persisted into the modern age through racialized beauty standards, as well as economic and social opportunities. Due to their perceived proximity to white individuals within the racial hierarchy, lighter skinned black Americans are considered to be more beautiful and are presented with the opportunity to receive a higher income and level of education than darker skinned individuals based on their physical appearance, as examined by Margaret L. Hunter. Nevertheless, these individuals are still barred from reaching the same levels of opportunity as white individuals, which is depicted through a lower employment and income rate, indicating their inability to transcend beyond their social racial category. Instead, there appears to be an unhealthy racial hierarchy created within the black race which stigmatizes and divides coloured individuals from collaborating, as per the wishes of early colonizers in my perception. Through accommodating to the desires of early European colonizers, colorism exhibits tendencies of Nobles conceptual incarceration, in which coloured individuals are still submissive and uncritical towards their reasons of perceiving lighter skin as being more socially acceptable based on a European