Before the Bronze Era: A Brief History
I’ve been doing a little reading on sun tanning in America to try to understand what American’s views on beauty were before sun tanning became popular. Perhaps, if I understand how the shift in ideals I can start to understand how it began and developed. I compare the history of American ideals of beauty to my experience in China. These are the findings of my project:
Before the 1920s suntans were considered to be a mark of the working class. Upper class women wanted to differentiate themselves by being pale. A lily white complexion was a sign of beauty. A tan would permanently ruin a woman’s beautiful complexion by making her skin coarse and unrefined [1]. Class differences also reinforced racial differences.
I can certainly relate to this view. Upper class Chinese people are typically have a fair complexion because they work in the office during the day. They also tend to be from the North. Lower class Chinese people are typically darker because they do manual labor where they have more exposure to the sun.
White races were meant for white collared jobs as black races could only obtain jobs under the white collars. An American surgeon Charles E. Woodruff explains the link between color and biology. “Men have evolved to the zone where they lived…blacks at the tropical, brown and olive-skinned races further into the less fiercely lighted zones and the blonder, whiter races at the cloudy north” [1]. From these assumptions Woodruff reinforces job niches. Blacks live in the tropical zones where they are exposed to more sunlight and can therefore work under the sun longer than whites since they are biologically more fit for it.
In China a North- South gap exists. This is similar to the North-South gap in America where the South sees the North as rich and snobby and the North see the South as poor and uneducated. Southern Chinese people are darker because they lie closer to the equator where the natural resources are richer for crops to grow. In China, a tan would bring Northern Chinese people closer to becoming Southern Chinese. This is undesirable. Southerners are seen as more biologically fit as farmers working under the sun longer than Northerners. Tanning would not go over well in the North.
Here is a list directly taken from Wikipedia to help emphasize differences between Northerners and Southerners:
The stereotypical Northerner is:
* Is taller and bigger
* Has lighter skin (some have purely white skin)
* Has small, slit-like, and/or slanty eyes with single eyelids (i.e. an epicanthal fold)
* Has a longer rugged face (possibly with considerably more facial hair than southerners)
* Speaks a northern Mandarin dialect
* Eats wheat-based food rather than rice-based food
* Is loud, loyal, boisterous, warm-hearted, open, and prone to drunkenness and "thunderbolt" displays of emotion, such as anger
The stereotypical Southerner:
* Is shorter and smaller
* Has darker skin
* Has large, almond-shaped eyes with double eyelids
* Has a smooth, round face
* Speaks a southern dialect such as Wu, Hakka, Yue (Cantonese), or Min
* Eats rice-based food rather than wheat-based food
* Is clever, calculating, wealthy, hardworking, and prone to "mincemeat" displays of emotion, such as brooding melancholy
(Note that these are very rough stereotypes, and are greatly complicated both by further stereotypes by province [or even county] and by real life.)
In America, a suntan would bring whites closer to becoming blacks and ruin the neat hierarchy of jobs and money. [1]However, sun tanning has become a trend endorsed by celebrities.
Tanning became popular in the 1920s and most people will credit Coco Chanel with this trend. They say that she started to use bronze mannequins as sun tanning was becoming fashionable. From there the trend took off…
Works Cited [1] Segrave,
Kerry 2005 Suntanning
in 20th Century America: McFarland & Company.
Comments
So here's what I think: The birthcontinent of homo sapiens is africa, dark was most likely the dominant color. When we look at migrations to the north, we know that dark skin wasn't necessary for an environment with much less sun intensity. Therefore paler people who normally would've....sunburned to death in africa? were able to survive and reproduce too with the darker population. Eventually, paler skin was simply selected among the northern populations. Of course there are gradiations, or clines as we call them in biology-and it's most likely due to a mix of reproductive selection and environmental factors.
Woodruff got it wrong and is simply another person who used science to justify his racist views. White people are just too damn lazy to work in the sun.
First I want to say that I appreciate your honesty and that through your blog you really seem to try to learn the other side. At first when I heard about your blog I thought to myself that you must have self esteem issues because I thought, "How could she not love her skin tone."
Growing up, however I did not always like my skin tone either. I am an African American and my skin is from being fair skinned. I always believed that the people of my race that were as they say "the lighter the better". They always seemed to be treated better and received the most attention. As I matured I learned that it was not that they were any better than me but that the black community has been taught to see themselves in a certain way. There has been a programming in our minds that tell us we are not beautiful.
This is why it is so ironic for me to see white males and females sunbathing or going to receive tans. It is almost as though they are imitating the very thing that was not acceptable before. Advertisements have just started to market to African Americans and include them.
This trend of darker skinned people being on the end of the social ladder is also not just an American thing either. I enjoyed reading about the class differences where you are from. I have also learned that in Latin America this kind of hierarchy exists too.
I am most interested in learning more about if your perception changes or not. I would just like to say that it took me awhile to learn that beauty is skin deep and I am still learning this- but remember to love all of yourself because you have just as much to offer the world as anyone else.