Post
by PhilipG » Wed Nov 01, 2006 5:00 am
I do find it amazing that western people risk skin cancer and possible death in order to be brown and asian people risk pain and possibly permanent disfigurement in order to be white.
Check out Cat Barton's article from the PP Post -
Dying to be pale? The fatal attraction for white skin
By Cat Barton
Pick your way through the labyrinth of narrow, dank passages carpeted with litter at varying stages of decomposition, and you might manage to find Stall 45 in Phnom Penh's Psar Kandal.
Hair straighteners snap purposefully, nails are painted, and eyebrows carefully shaved as a bevy of women beautify in anticipation of the evening ahead.
But behind the standard pampering lurks the more alchemical side of Phnom Penh's plethora of tiny, ramshackle beauty salons like Stall 45: skin-whitening treatments.
"You have to mix up all the powders and leave them on your skin for two-and-a-half hours," said Sophal, a Stall 45 regular. "It feels like your skin is burning; it is really painful."
Large jars of pale orange powder line the walls of Stall 45 giving the tiny space the air of an apothecary. The jars are unlabeled, and no one is able to confirm exactly what the powder is made of. But they all testify to its efficacy.
"I shed my skin like a snake," Sophal said. "It really makes your skin much lighter."
Long strands of dead skin trail from the arms of one girl who has recently had the treatment. Though she professes herself pleased with the results, the process is known to cause photosensitivity and other skin problems.
"After some women do this, if they are not careful and go in the sun they will burn really easily," Sophal said. "You can also get red spots or dark patches on your skin."
Enduring burning skin for several hours and risking photosensitivity in pursuit of pallor may seem bizarre to the average Westerner, but white skin has long been highly prized across Asia, said Dr Reid Sheftall of the American Medical Center.
"People just want to look whiter all over," he said. "The companies sell tons of products [as white skin] is a sign of aristocracy, especially in countries like Cambodia where the natural skin tone is darker."
Khmer people prefer lighter skin. "Ah Khmao"- meaning "Little Darky" - is a frequently used derogatory nickname in Cambodia. Sophal said girls with light skin are considered more beautiful, which makes it easier to find a husband.
As a result of such cultural conceptions of beauty, the market for whitening products is vast. And now Cambodia's market stall treatments have to compete with multinational corporations eager to cash in on the Khmer penchant for pale skin.
"Most Asian women prefer white skin," said Frank Yee, country manager of Goodhill Enterprises, the Cambodian distributor of multinational pharmaceutical giant Proctor and Gamble's products. "Being pale makes them feel that they have a good complexion and that they look younger. A lot of people are brown [skinned] in Cambodia and so they will use whitening creams."
Proctor and Gamble are targeting Cambodia's vast and ever-expanding youth market with an affordable range of whitening products.
"In Cambodia we sell Olay Total White," Yee said. "Whitening products are very marketable, and Cambodia's population is very young. The 17- to-25-year-old age group is a huge market and that is who we are trying to appeal to with our whitening creams."
The products are cheap, just 1,000 riel for a sachet of whitening lotion, and are being aggressively marketed.
"Olay is a very well-respected brand and we are trying to reach the mass market," Yee said. "We broadcast advertisements on CTN and TV5 and we design special promotions to create the impulse to purchase our product in shops."
But whether whitening treatments manufactured by multinationals are safer than the concoctions of power on offer in Psar Kandal remains debatable.
The active ingredients of the Olay Total White range are sunscreens (zinc and titanium) and vitamin E, which will not damage, nor dramatically whiten, the skin.
But Olay's owners, Proctor and Gamble, recently found themselves embroiled in a storm of controversy over the safety of their whitening products.
Chinese regulators last month found traces of two toxic metals, chromium and neodymium, in nine SKII products, a high-end cosmetics brand owned by Proctor and Gamble. Three of these products claim to whiten skin.
Chromium is carcinogenic and can cause eczema, neodymium can cause eye and skin irritation. Proctor and Gamble withdrew the products from the market pending a probe by a Chinese health and safety watchdog.
The problem is, experts say, that unlike pharmaceutical drugs, which are regulated and need to pass trials proving their efficacy and safety before they reach the market, there is little regulation of cosmetics even in more developed Asian countries.
In Cambodia there are laws to regulate the sale of prescription drugs, enacted in 1996, although attempts to enforce them have always ended in failure: illegal pharmacies selling drugs in an unregulated fashion abound.
"There are some Ministry of Health guidelines regarding cosmetics," said Yee. "But we have never had any problems with them."
Ung Phyrun, Secretary of State at the Ministry of Health (MoH), said he was too busy to answer questions on MoH regulations for cosmetics.
SKII is not imported by Goodhill as it is considered too high-end for the Cambodian market, but the now-unavailable-in-China products are easy to find in Sorya mall - with prices ranging from $80 to $170.
"We import it from Singapore," said the sales representative at Forever shop in Sorya mall. "It is selling quite well."
But the health costs of even these high-end whitening creams could be far higher than their financial price tag.
The recent SKII outcry is only the latest in an ongoing series of scientific denouncements of the safety of whitening products.
Experts have previously found unacceptably high levels of mercury - a potentially deadly substance that helps to keep skin white - in a number of skin-whitening cosmetics.
In 2000, a study of 38 whitening creams carried out by Christopher Lam, a professor of chemical pathology at the Chinese University in Hong Kong, found eight of the creams contained excessive amounts of mercury.
Mercury blocks an enzyme that is required for the formation of melanin, the dark pigment in skin. Prolonged exposure to mercury can be lethal as it attacks the central nervous system and can result in brain and kidney damage.
When even high-end whitening products produced by multinational corporations are found to have potentially lethal chemicals involved, one cannot but wonder exactly what Stall 45 is pasting on its customers' skin.
Although there are a huge number of products on the market in Cambodia, Dr Sheftall is uncertain of the efficacy or safety of any of them.
"There are lots of over-the-counter creams that don't do much and are largely an advertising ploy," he said. "There are certain products that do have an effect, for example Retin A, which can lighten darker spots on the skin, and then there are products which just literally bleach the skin."
Back at Stall 45 health risks are secondary to the pursuit of pallor. For Sophal, the adage "One must suffer to be beautiful" rings true.
"Khmer men prefer white-skinned ladies," she said. "Lots of Cambodian women use the whitening powder on their skin even though it is a difficult beauty treatment because they like white skin - it looks beautiful."