With rising incomes, more and more Asians are turning to products to lighten their skin colour - and cosmetics giants are cashing in.
Swayed by advertising, TV soaps and blockbuster movies featuring glamorous models with creamy complexions, Asians are spending away in a rapidly expanding skin-whitening market.
The number of such products introduced across the region skyrocketed to 226 in 2006, after averaging about 50 annually since 2002, according to market research company Datamonitor.
The preference for lighter skin is nothing new, said Thai dermatologist Dr. Chitralada Vibhagool, but it has been boosted by media campaigns tapping into an expanding middle-class and women's growing incomes.
"Traditionally, people with darker skin were the ones who worked outside in the sun," she said in an interview in her Bangkok office. "Today, lighter skin is connected to higher social status and wealth. Nowadays, people have more money to spend on cosmetics."
A survey by Synovate, another research firm, found that skin whitening products were used by 58 percent of Thai women between 18 and 64 with a monthly household income of at least 20,000 baht ($NZ808).
Respondents spent 1,950 baht monthly on skin care, roughly 10 percent of their income, according to the unpublished 2004 survey, which was made available to The Associated Press.
The same survey found that half of Filipino women, 45 percent of Hong Kong women and 41 percent of Malaysian women use a skin-whitening product. India is another growing market.
Men too have caught the whitening fever. Supermarkets and pharmacies boast rows of whitening aftershaves, creams, cleansers, moisturizers and even wipes, designed for men. After discovering that Indian men were snapping up women's whitening products, Beiersdorf released a "Nivea For Men" whitening line last year.
Unilever has launched three men's lines with whiteners. The Anglo-Dutch company says the "lightening" sector has grown 12 percent annually for the past three years in Asia.
"According to our research, 87 percent of Thai women want to have lighter skin," Unilever spokeswoman Aranya Luepradid said. "In Asia, lighter skin equates with beauty and well-being. Lightening products are developed in response to these consumer needs."
A 35-year-old senior executive at a major Thai company applies six beauty aids every morning to her near-perfect complexion. Three of them contain whiteners. The woman asked to be identified only by her nickname, Noi, because of the sensitivity of the topic.
She said she won't give them up despite warnings that long-term use of some whitening agents can discolor skin and actually darken sun and age spots.
Bangkok's major thoroughfares are lined with giant billboards featuring a pale-skinned Eurasian model promoting Neutrogena's "Fine Fairness." In China, advertisements for a Nivea whitening eye cream read, "To make you more eye-catching."
There is even a nipple-whitening cream promising "softer skin, pinker shade" and deodorants and antiperspirants that lighten armpits.
"If I believe that something will help me look better, then I have no hesitation to buy it," said Thai fashion designer Chanala Chongsathit, 45.
Pom, as she is known, spends about 100,000 baht annually on beauty aids, including a 2,400-baht whitening mask to counter the effects of years of playing golf and tennis.
Her favorite brand is Shiseido, she said, "because the Japanese understand Asian skin the best. And, of course, their skin is the whitest."
Not everyone can afford the brand-name whiteners, and some resort to unsafe substitutes.
In 2005, Sumarni, a housemaid who like many Indonesians goes by one name, returned from a holiday with blisters across her face. She said her skin was burned by a whitening paste prepared by a neighbor.
Several months later, she stole a jar of expensive anti-aging moisturizer from her employer, mistakenly believing it would lighten her dark brown skin to the pallor of the auburn-haired woman she works for, Nicole Lediard.
"This theft was sheer desperation," said Lediard, a French-American psychologist living in Jakarta. "It shows the risks some women will take trying to conform to a certain standard of beauty." She did not fire Sumarni.
Thailand's Food and Drug Administration says nearly 100 illegal whitening products are sold around the country. In Indonesia, officials have identified more than 50 banned cosmetics.
Banned substances include hydroquinone, retinoic acid and mercury, which are among the cheapest whitening agents. Any cosmetic containing these substances is confiscated and destroyed, said Wattana Akraekthalin, the director of cosmetic and hazardous substance control at the Thai FDA.
But, she added, "The manufacturers of these illegal products are simply changing the names and the packaging, but the ingredients are still the same."
Hydroquinone is safe when prescribed by dermatologists in concentrations not exceeding 4 percent, Vibhagool, a U.S. board-certified dermatologist, said. In large quantities, though, and especially over time, it has proven to be dangerous.
Unilever said its products are tested for quality and safety by the company's in-house Safety and Environmental Assurance Center in southern England.
"No product can enter the market without ... approval," Luepradid said.
An anti-whitening backlash may be gaining ground. In an article last year in a trendy weekend magazine, Thai journalist Nikki Assavathorn bemoaned her compatriots' "skin racism."
She accused the media and beauty product companies of brainwashing consumers by feeding into some deep "self-loathing" and imposing the white beauty ideal "to keep the profits pouring in."
"Since when did we become so preoccupied with fair skin, isn't it unnecessary and demeaning? Are we so self-loathing that we believe we will be deemed more attractive if we have a lighter shade of skin?" she asked.
Assavathorn urged readers to toss out their whitening tubes and pots and just "enjoy who you are!" - By Marilyn August
