A whiter shade of female

The following is the text of my Deeply Superficial column in this month's (sydney) and (melbourne) magazines:
A few weeks ago, I was strap-hanging in a crowded New York subway car thinking about the colour of my skin. It was difficult not to in this situation – I was the only white person in the car. And I was very white, having come from Australia’s winter to the middle of a heatwave in Manhattan. Just to make me feel even more different, the occupants of the car were jiving to blues played by an old musician sitting on a crate. He’d play a few bars and then ask his audience to guess which singer performed the tune. “Who made it?” he’d call out. I jived along with the rest of them. And then he turned to me. “White lady,” he said. “This one’s for you. Don’t none of the rest of you tell her who it is.” He played a few bars. It was something very famous. Panicked, I said the first thing that came into my head. “Otis Redding?” Everyone looked at me in pity. “No!” yelled the musician. “Tina Turner before Ike hit her!” My fellow passengers dissolved into laughter. The song was Proud Mary. Now I felt really White.

But I digress… I’m thinking about white skin, as I always do this time of the year, when fake tans beckon. I’ve travelled a lot in the past year and most of my journeys have taken me to places where I’ve felt very blonde and very white – Rajisthan in India, Beijing in China, Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia, Huvafen Fushi in the Maldives, Harlem in New York. Unfortunately for some travellers, skin colour has become such an issue these days that if you’ve got the wrong one you’re likely to have your fellow passengers gang up on you and throw you off the plane. So it’s rather instructive - and humbling – to move outside your comfort zone and become the “other,” the odd one out. I had a wonderful time in Harlem, where people seem more courteous, friendly and good-humoured than the rest of Manhattan, but on one occasion I walked into a Black Power shop, where a fab teeshirt of Angela Davis had caught my attention, and the sales assistant froze me out with her glare. (Too much bad history, I suppose.)

This summer, white New Yorkers seemed obsessed with becoming brown, taking to solariums to get a deep, nuggetty tan which would horrify most Australians. But we’re an odd planet – in Hong Kong, I was gobsmacked by the shelves of skin-whitening products in department stores and pharmacies. The obsession to be pale in Asian countries mirrors the obsession to be golden tan in the west.Over the past year, skin-whitening products such as SK-II Whitening and Clinique’s Derma White have become available in Australia. It’s not so much that we want to become whiter it’s just that we like what colour we have to be free of age spots and irregular pigmentation, to be radiant and luminous, to use the two favourite buzzwords of the industry.

“Whitening” is a bit of a misnomer. All skins produces melanin when exposed to UV rays. When there is too much melanin – caused by sun exposure or hormonal changes – the skin is unable to decompose it and so it remains in clusters or blotches on the surface. Whether you’re yellow, light brown, caramel or pink, there’s an argument that “whitening” products will work for you in evening out your skin tone and reducing visible sun damage.Right now, with the warm weather here, I’m trying Clarins Radiance Plus Self Tanning Body Lotion on my legs and SK-II Whitening Source on my face. It’s a bit schizophrenic, I know. I’m conditioned to think my face should be white but my body golden. I suspect it’s something to do with the idea that being tan makes you look slimmer.

Is that the sound of my proudly black soul sisters up in Harlem chuckling?