{"id":50227,"date":"2016-11-25T22:50:36","date_gmt":"2016-11-25T22:50:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=50227"},"modified":"2016-11-25T22:50:36","modified_gmt":"2016-11-25T22:50:36","slug":"tall-pale-and-handsome-why-more-asian-men-are-using-skin-whitening-products","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=50227","title":{"rendered":"Tall, pale and handsome: why more Asian men are using skin-whitening products"},"content":{"rendered":"

Tall, pale and handsome: why more Asian men are using skin-whitening products<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

The Conversation<\/a>
\n2016-11-24<\/p>\n

Gideon Lasco<\/strong><\/a>, Ph.D. Candidate in Medical Anthropology
\nAmsterdam Institute for Social Science Research (AISSR)
\nUniversity of Amsterdam<\/em><\/p>\n

Jose, 19, is a college student in Puerto Princesa City, Philippines<\/a>.<\/p>\n

On a regular school day, after he wakes up, he takes a shower, scrubbing his body using soap made of papaya<\/a> (Carica papaya<\/em>), a fruit that\u2019s said to have skin-whitening properties. Afterwards, he applies a facial whitening lotion, and before finally going to school he uses SPF<\/a> 30 sunscreen, again with whitening properties, on his face and arms.<\/p>\n

Jose was one of many young people I met in my ethnographic work as part of the Chemical Youth Project<\/a>, a research programme that sought to document and make sense of the different chemicals that young people use in their everyday lives, from cosmetics to cigarettes.<\/p>\n

Skin whitening among women has long been commonplace in the Philippines<\/a> and other parts of Asia and the world but, while working on this project, I was struck by the fact that young men too, are using a plethora of whitening products. And that these products have proliferated in various retail outlets, from shopping malls to small sari-sari, or neighbourhood, stores.<\/p>\n

But this development is not unique to the Philippines<\/a> either. A 2015 study<\/a> found that the prevalence of skin-whitening product use among male university students in 26 low and middle-income countries was 16.7%. The figure was higher in many Asian countries: 17.4% in India<\/a>, 25.4% in the Philippines, and 69.5% in Thailand<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In the Asia-Pacific region<\/a> alone, the male cosmetics industry was estimated at $2.1 billion in 2016<\/a>. Whiteners are likely to be a significant component of this figure; a 2010 study<\/a> reported that 61% of all cosmetics in India had a whitening effect…<\/p>\n

Read the entire article here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Tall, pale and handsome: why more Asian men are using skin-whitening products The Conversation 2016-11-24 Gideon Lasco, Ph.D. Candidate in Medical Anthropology Amsterdam Institute for Social Science Research (AISSR) University of Amsterdam Jose, 19, is a college student in Puerto Princesa City, Philippines. On a regular school day, after he wakes up, he takes a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1649,12,16,8],"tags":[25539,240,25540,1351,1799,5628],"class_list":["post-50227","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-anthropology","category-articles","category-asia","category-media-archive","tag-chemical-youth-project","tag-colorism","tag-gideon-lasco","tag-india","tag-philippines","tag-the-conversation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50227","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=50227"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50227\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":50228,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50227\/revisions\/50228"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=50227"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=50227"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=50227"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}