posted by Laurie Mulvey
Girl suffers burns over seventy percent of her body after lying 16 minutes in a coin operated suntanning bed.
Let’s not forget about skin darkening practices—and the premature aging, painful burning, sun poisoning and skin cancer that result because light-skinned people often don’t feel good about themselves when they’re “too white.” As a white person myself, this is a refrain I’ve heard many times—and one that taught me that it was normal to put oil on my skin and swelter in the summer sun even though the act made me cranky and uncomfortable. But I thought I was moving closer to a standard of beauty that I needed to attain. So I did it—as do many like me.
Collage of skin cancers
And let’s not forget about the orange-y complexions that result when white people bake themselves in space age tanning ovens all winter to maintain their “color.” What do we make of this? What do we think white people are trying to accomplish while dark skinned people have the idea that they should be lighter? Who are white people emulating?
And what keeps all of us from ever really juxtaposing these practices of whitening and darkening our skins? Are we afraid to conclude that human beings are just sad creatures who are never satisfied with what they have inherited no matter what the power politics and hegemonic context in which they live?
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