Don't fret, darling, brown is beautiful

 

So why has an insecurity gestated inside her? Why is that when she looks in the mirror she doesn’t see a pretty face? Why on a recent trip was I forced to recount an insecurity from my own childhood as a means to hopefully salve her demons? Why, oh why, does a child her age have to deal with this?

As I negotiated traffic on that trip I looked at my sun-ravaged arms, common for a middle-aged, fair-skinned Australian like me and the countless Australians who grew up thinking they were less attractive because of their skin colour – told by advertisers and a sun-worshipping public that a fair complexion was about as desirable as being a pasty-skinned English tourist just off the plane. 

My eyes occasionally wandered to the lovely face in the rear-view mirror while recounting how as a child I roasted my freckled skin under the sun before graduating to a tanning bed’s malefic glow; a vain, foolhardy and futile attempt to be the archetypal bronzed Aussie. 

I didn’t tell her it is a miracle I haven’t had skin cancer but probably will. I didn’t tell her I sometimes contemplate the worst outcome of my youthful inferiority complex: being told I have a melanoma, the most deadly type of skin cancer; and that I, like more than 1,600 Australians a year, will die of the disease. 

What I told her, or at least tried to, was this: Don’t succumb to a culture that downgrades you based on the colour of your skin: You’re brown and you’re beautiful.

But really, what hope did I have of making an impression when confronted with an ingrained social flaw, with snake-oil salesmen fanning it and the insouciance of scores of people self-flagellating over their skin? And even if the authorities decided to tackle what has been described as a looming national crisis, if it isn’t one already, would there be enough resolve?

In response to alarming skin cancer rates, the iconic “Slip! Slop! Slap!” campaign was launched in Australia in 1981 with the goal of persuading people to slip on a shirt, slop on sunscreen and slap on a hat. It spearheaded a decades-long national movement to get people to cover up in the world’s skin cancer capital, an initiative that has included the regular use of shock ads, so invasive is the enemy, and recently resulted in a nationwide tanning salon ban.

However like any cultural change it has been a Sisyphean process, the results mixed. Bronzed Aussies’ recalcitrance is in large part encouraged by an advertising industry’s continued promotion of tanned models as the beauty standard. But the battle to try and counter that will continue because surrender is not an option. 

Thailand needs to wage a similar war given the multitudes whose self-worth is hobbled by a multibillion-baht “whitening” industry’s destructive lead, the two faces seen through the alabaster translucency of immoral, effulgent ads, and the proliferation of products labelled either ineffectual or dangerous: skin irritation, uneven skin bleaching, increased pigmentation, severe itchy rashes, the thinning of skin, redness, permanent skin bleaching. When considering that list, consider this: genital whitening and fairness baby oils are on the market here.

The marketing of anti-melanin creams – products that claim to make you whiter by reducing your in-built sun protection – is another disturbing consequence of this complexion class system. 

It would be tragically ironic if a culture that lies prostrate before the sun god and a culture diametrically opposite to it were both forced to confront skin cancer as a serious national health threat.

And what about the pretty face in the rear-view mirror? Will she one day see herself as I do? Or will the reflection staring back at her be bleached white like Michael Jackson?