New "Beauty Product" Marketed In India Allows Women To Bleach Their Vag... WTF?
9:48 pm - 04/16/2012Your Vagina Isn’t Just Too Big, Too Floppy, and Too
Hairy—It’s Also Too Brown
By Lindy WestApr 11, 2012 12:40 PMGood news, ladies! Society has discovered another new thing that's wrong with you, which means another opportunity for you to make yourself more attractive for your man. Score! Turns out, the color of your vagina is gross and everyone hates it. So bleach that motherfucker. Bleach it right now!
In this commercial for an Indian product called Clean and Dry Intimate Wash, a (very light-skinned) couple sits down for what would have been a peaceful cup of morning coffee—if the woman's disgusting brown vagina hadn't ruined everything! The dude can't even bring himself look at her. He can't look at his coffee either, because it only reminds him of his wife's dripping, coffee-brown hole! Fortunately, the quick-thinking woman takes a shower, scrubbing her swarthy snatch with Clean and Dry Intimate Wash ("Freshness + Fairness"). And poof! Her vadge comes out blinding white like a downy baby lamb (and NOT THE GROSS BLACK KIND) and her husband—whose penis, I can only assume, is literally a light saber—is all, "Hey, lady! Cancel them divorce papers and LET'S BONE."
Needless to say, certain citizens are troubled by this product—which, in addition to just being fucking insane, brings up painful issues about the hierarchy of skin tone within the Indian community. As if it isn't bad enough that darker-skinned people are encouraged to stay out of the sun and invest in skin-bleaching products like Fair & Lovely, and that white actresses are being imported to play Indian people in Bollywood movies, now everyone has to be insecure about the fact that their vaginas happen to be the color that vaginas are??? Splendid! God, I was just saying the other day that my misogyny didn't have enough racism in it. So what are the pro-vadge-bleaching people thinking? Here's a hilarious explanation from a male ad exec:
It is hard to deny that fairness creams often get social commentators and activists all worked up. What they should do is take a deep breath and think again. Lipstick is used to make your lips redder, fairness cream is used to make you fairer-so what's the problem? I don't think any Youngistani today thinks the British Raj/White man is superior to us Brown folk. That's all 1947 thinking!
The only reason I can offer for why people like fairness, is this: if you have two beautiful girls, one of them fair and the other dark, you see the fair girl's features more clearly. This is because her complexion reflects more light. I found this amazing difference when I directed Kabir Bedi, who is very fair and had to wear dark makeup for Othello, the Black hero of the play. I found I had to have a special spotlight following Kabir around the stage because otherwise the audience could not see his expressions.
See? It makes perfect sense. We just want our vaginas to reflect more light—is that so wrong? I mean, WHAT IF MY CAR BREAKS DOWN AT NIGHT AND I DON'T HAVE A REFLECTIVE ENOUGH VAGINA? Really, the ultimate one-vagina-to-rule-them-all would glow in the dark like one of those deep-sea fishes. I need my vagina to attract more krill so my husband will fuck me again! (My husband is a whale.)
Basically the idea is to get as far away as possible from any color that vaginas actually come in. Because that's what's at the heart of this type of thinking—the perfect vagina would be something that's not a vagina at all.
(Source)
Article is satirical, but the subject matter it is commenting on is very real. This is not a "The Onion" style made-up piece.
I couldn't be paid to be put in a tanning bed, and I always put a shit ton of sunscreen on.
Seriously though, this article is so fucked up. All of the colors are beautiful, and people should not have to bleach their shit to feel like they are beautiful and a part of society!
No offence meant.
My apologies!
oh boo hoo
2. Did that one tame ass gif offend you so much?
Edited at 2012-04-17 04:28 am (UTC)
I can see how "pasty and proud" might seem a little worrying out of context and naturally the issues raised in the OP for women of colour are far more deep-seated and dodgy than white people being pressured to get a tan. Still, I think the sentiment to focus on is that dodgy beauty conventions should not force people to risk bleaching their skin and, as a side note, they shouldn't insist that people increase their risk of skin cancer either.
As they said, "all of the colours are beautiful".
Nobody should be made to feel like their skin color is unattractive, JFC...
Tell me of a history where pale white people are more systematically discriminated against than tanned whites and maybe we'll talk.
Yeah, I didn't say that.
I wrote this:
"naturally the issues raised in the OP for women of colour are far more deep-seated and dodgy than white people being pressured to get a tan"
This 'all colours are beautiful' rhetoric is something that is not represented in life.
Precisely. That's the point, right? It's an ideal to aspire to. Clearly the main focus needs to be on empowering people of colour if we are to achieve the wider ideal of genuine equality in diversity and I wouldn't wish to suggest otherwise.
I don't see people attempting to undermine the original context. In fact I see people fully expressing that they find the idea of people being expected to change their skin colour with bleach to be horrifying and unthinkable.
If people were saying that "this is exactly like when people expect you to tan" then I might agree. However, when people are noting that no one should have to change their skin colour to fit with some bogus fashion trends (particularly when, in the case in the OP, they are practically expected to mutilate themselves) that seems on-topic and, at very least, a reasonable side-point in a wider discussion.
It is an inappropriate side-topic because it is perpetuating the habit of not being able to shut up about white people for one fucking minute.
I have to ask, are you white?
Same reason why even though the issue of colourism had been hugely influenced by colonialism being fair was still a thing before it because being dark meant you had to work out in the fields and couldn't just like, stay inside and have grapes fed to you. Being pale was prized in the past in the West for the same reason. Now most people have to work indoors and it's been flipped.