“This is an unconscious attitude that we learned at home, then reinforced at school, and we see it in mass media,” she describes. Prejudice against one’s skin, as Arnado suggests, is most harmful when the discrimination starts at childhood. This prompted her to apply whitening reagents in response to this disparaging stigma because, she explains,“Making myself whiter would also mean more people-or boys in that matter-would find me more attractive.” “For quite some time during my early high school years, I was convinced that my morena skin made me look dirty or dull,” Kiana Garcia (IV, BS-PSY) shares. Exploring the many layers of colorism in the Philippines would help us recognize how our physical appearances sometimes dictate our interactions with one another. In a country where naturally dark-skinned people are conditioned to believe that being light-skinned is more attractive and advantageous, we are erasing much more than just beauty when we passively allow this harmful culture to happen. For instance, back in April of 2019, skin whitening company Glutamax was under hot water for their #YourFairAdvantage campaign which suggested that morena or dark-skinned Filipinas are disadvantaged compared to light-skinned Filipinas. Janet Arnado explains, “This hierarchy is based on the different skin tones within the same race.” Advertisements promoting skin whitening products plastered on billboards, the small screen, or on social media are today’s prime suspects for promoting colorism. “Colorism is a form of social hierarchy among people of the same race,” Behavioral Sciences Department Chair Dr. However, this does come with a hefty price-a mindset that sees dark skin as undesirable. As such, they have earned a permanent place in every Filipino woman’s beauty routine. Ranging from soaps to serums to creams, these products claim to give fairer skin in a matter of days or weeks. Amid the sudsy sachets of shampoo and tubes of toothpaste in a typical Filipino bathroom lies an infamous product-skin whiteners.
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