The many different shades of skin is striking here. I'm not sure that we have ever been anywhere besides Cuba with such a variety of skin hues. Being here opens my eyes to how narrowly we define what is beautiful.
The advertisements on the bus, the TV, and billboards reflect the wide range of beauty in this country. I hadn't realized how engrained the tiny, white girl image is in the American psyche as the epitome of beauty until I was surrounded by advertisements with Malay women, Arabic women, Chinese and Indian women. Some of them are wearing hijab, some are modestly dressed, and a few scantily clad but they are selling fashion, perfume, and all the same things as the US. They are all beautiful women, but none of them fit into just one category of beauty.
What did surprise me were all the advertisements for massages and pedicures. Those advertisements all feature white women. We have also seen skin-whitening lotion advertised. For a place with so many shades, it is surprising to see pale skin showing up anywhere.
I'm relatively aware of white privilege and how that gets played out in many different ways, but it doesn't feel the same here. There is a funny indifference to Americans here, at least so far in our experience. There are many Australians and Europeans, but folks are surprised to hear we are from the US, especially when we say Alaska.
Juneau
1 comment:
Everyone's idea of beauty is different was a lesson learned early in my life. As a girl about the age of Hannah, I lived in Libya. With my white skin, bright red hair and green eyes, and my sisters very blonde hair and blue eyes, we received a lot of attention when we went places. People would want to touch our hair! Especially because Libyan women wore Barracans at that time. When in public, all Muslim women were expected to be covered head to to in a white barracan, with only the left eye and toes showing.
Of course, I have invisible eyelashes and eyebrows,so my idea of beauty is dark eyelashes and eyebrows, which is usually accompanied by beautiful dark skin and dark hair. Folks in other places, Asians and Africans, for example, often wish for whiter skin, hair, eyes, etc., and many go to great lengths to achieve the look, just as fair skinned people attempt to sun tan and color hair darker! Have you ever seen Hispanic television, Telemundo or Univision? The TV hosts and hostesses, as well as the stars of the shows, usually have bleached blonde hair.
Living in the northern part of the northern hemisphere, many tend to have blonde hair. Many attempt to color it black. In the Southwestern United States, many have dark hair and many dye it blonde!
Of course, I am an old lady and it has taken years of moving around to realize these differences. But in general, people want the opposite of what they have: those with curly hair want it straight; people with straight hair want it curly, and so on. Dr. Seuss' book about Star Bellied Sneetches sums up this human condition quite well.
I am very familiar with the feeling of being a minority, welcome to the game.
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