Black face, whitening creams... i.e. what is wrong with this world?

At the blossoming age of 23 I won a jackpot - I received a scholarship to study in Singapore. At that point in my life, I have not travelled further than Italy and I have never flown a plane. For the first time, I discovered the magic of luggage weight limitation, which made me get rid of anything that was heavier than it deserved to be (very subjective measure, I did fit in an awful amount of snacks, as I recall now). It meant that apart from the toothpaste and deodorant no cosmetic deserved space in my bag. Therefore, the first order of business after arrival was: shop for essentials. Luckily, I lived right across from Choa Chu Kang MRT station (MRT = Mass Rapid Transit, in Singapore you don't use words like metro or train - you come up with weirdly long names and use the abbreviations instead), that had a small mall. First cosmetic store. Shampoo, soap... ladidadida... face cream. The usual, long and confusing shelf that makes me feel like straight from the 'Borat' movie. Me and cosmetics... What's this? Face cream. And this? Face cream. And that? Face cream. I fall into quantum loop of confusion, but luckily, a shop assistant comes to the rescue and pulls me out of it. How can she help me? Just give me some (cheap, hello, I am a student) face cream with UV filter. Rookie mistake. I received a long speech about advantages and disadvantages of different ingredients that change my DNA, stimulate my cells and will make my face smoother than a baby bum. Desperate, I cling to one box. 'This one, I want this one.' Oh wait. I read the text on the box. Whitening day cream. Can you give me one non-whitening? I kind of wanted to get tan, look at me, it's December, I came from the middle of European winter, what's the point of going all the way to a country near equator and walking around looking like a sickly ghost? 'We don't have anything non-whitening.' Puzzled, I don't buy a cream I suffered for so much, pay for the rest of my shopping and go to the next cosmetic store. Then to a pharmacy. Then to another pharmacy. At the end I gave up and bought something that promised to turn me into a Greek ancient sculpture with alabaster complexion. Spoiler alert, it did not.

This event has been an introduction to a whole new world of beauty advertising in Asia, focusing on one, clear message: white skin is better. Call me a small-town idiot, but I really was unaware of the whole thing until I came to the big city and was enlightened.

You may tell me that race context may be just one factor. There's also cultural context of society transformation - brighter skin can be a sign of belonging to higher-income socioeconomic class, since in-door office jobs that turn us into pale zombies on average pay better. But that explanation, as much as it held strong in Europe until some point, was made redundant after holidays were invented. Higher income equals possibilities to afford spending time travelling, which means being outdoors (unless it's a covid year), which means tanned skin, so there's that. The truth is, the only factor in reality that pushes white=beautiful is underlying racisms.

That push from beauty industry is so strong that even stars like Beyonce or Rihanna show themselves as whiter in the commercials. If those, who many women around the world see as a beauty icons are still giving up to this trend, how should a young girl feel watching all this on media? I am a mum of a mixed-race girl and the stories I hear from other mums are showing how big self-esteem problem it creates already as of young age. Girls as young as six or seven are asking their mums for advice on how to make their skin brighter.

We live in a bizarre world. On the other end of the spectrum: black face. Recently I came across news from the country I was born in, Poland, about a theater show made in a kindergarten by the teachers, performing a poem with all their faces painted black. The poem is over hundred years old and by today's standards is simply racist. It is about a young, black kid named Bambo, who lives in Africa. Not only uses derogatory (by modern standards) language, but also horrible stereotypes of Africans. As the video went viral and many media outlets condemned the show, reading the commentary on social media made me almost cry. And not out of laughter. Out of hopeless helplessness.

The cultural context of black face differs per country, but it comes from the same origin: theater. As early as in the XIX century, white actors painted their faces black to portray people of color on stage. This trend started in the US and later spread into Europe. It's not that US was short of talented people of color to portray Othello, but the socioeconomic status of Afro-Americans was not getting them on the top of the hiring list. And it's not for the part Othello that actors were coloring themselves. Usually it was to portray black people in a grotesque way. It was a caricature and circus, not the high-end art. And if you watch some of the European cinema until the 80s of XX century, you will still see some remnants of that. You see actors with painted, black faces playing roles than no black person would play, as they are humiliating and degrading.

But the social media comments under the video I described earlier were full of astonishment and pc accusations. What is wrong with painting face black to show Africans? What is wrong with calling them n word, that word has been used for hundreds of years?

I watch my daughter, I watch other kids from her school and I think what if we lived in the world that would not make you feel so uncomfortable about what is the most basic thing about your body. It's nothing you decided on, it's nothing that, in theory, defines you as a person - neither your intellectual capability, nor quality of your character is linked to the color of your skin. But you walk through the world that constantly tries to use it to either shame you, or embarrass you, or make you feel like a joke for others.

I don't have the answers to that question. I just have lots of confusion.