Thais getting duped by skin whitener salesmen

[boomerangutang]

                               I'm looking at the opening page of the major Eng.Lang newspaper. In their Life Section, there's a quarter page sized ad.  There's a pretty woman's face with skin as white as the paper its printed on.  Alongside is the following blurb (excerpt):  "....exposure to sunlight causes dark patches to appear on my face." 

 

                            It is signed by Nitra Kittiyakorn.   It's an ad for Apex Medical Center which offers laser surgery "Dark Spot Removal".

 

                            Everyone reading this knows Thais have fixations about needing snow-white skin.  Along with that, they're afraid of even a few rays of sunlight.  Even my hill tribe friends wear long sleeved heavy shirts (over other shirts) on the hottest days - while sweating like they're in a sauna.  

 

                         Thais are sensitive to ridicule - more so than they're responsive to common sense suggestions.  I encourage every farang to tell their Thai friends three basic things:  A. tan-colored skin is fine.   B.  Natural is better than fake    C. Sunlight does not cause dark patches to appear on skin.  

 

                                     When farang do this, their Thai friends will grin and say, "yes, I know that, but Thai people are like that."  

 

                                 Things can change.  There was a time when cigarette companies had ads telling people that smoking tobacco was good for health.  Tomatoes were considered poisonous by early European settlers in New England. Old Chinese men think that rhino horn keratin gives them hard-ons.  Yet, ideas can change.  People can adjust their outlooks on things.   Thais can mature to realize they're spending hundreds of millions of baht on whitening creams and laser surgery, which could be better spent on healthy foods.  There's hope, isn't there?

 

 

Edited May 22, 2017 by boomerangutang

[Dexlowe]

Sorry, mate, but most Thais don't change on the advice of foreigners. That's not bashing, that's fact, and I know it from 3 (pointless) decades of trying to do so. 

[wildewillie89]

They change on individual/family levels if you can provide basic scientific research they can comprehend - and then get that researched backed up by a Thai professional. And that can gradually move to community levels. The problem is the way research is presented, a lot of Thai don't have the educational level to understand it to begin with.

 

Although, it is not much different from 'white' people wearing fake tan. Westerners look just as ridiculous wearing fake 'orange' as opposed to Thai's fake 'white'. Maybe both sides will just get cancer from the product rather than the sun haha. 

Generally Thai in rural areas wear the clothing, not to make themselves white, but it keeps them cooler. Usually, it is recommended on hot days to cover as much surface area of the skin as you can. If it is to stay white then. again, you can compare it to the idiotic 'white' people who sun bake all day in the sun just waiting for cancerous cells to develop. It is not a country specific problem as such, just a general problem all around the world.

 

Obviously, there are a lot of image issues in many Asian countries though, whether it be about plastic surgery or skin colour...who do Thai look to for how they should look? South Korea generally, and we know how they 'fake' their celebrities are. 

Edited May 22, 2017 by wildewillie89

[Dexlowe]

1 hour ago, wildewillie89 said:

and then get that researched backed up by a Thai professional.

... and herein lies the rub. It is terribly depressing to encounter someone who refuses to acknowledge that you know more than him, even when no other Thais are present (this is an issue of the dreaded "face", tinged with racism). This refusal to learn and grow has left me exhausted.

[DLang]

1 minute ago, Dexlowe said:

This refusal to learn and grow has left me exhausted.

What are you, some White Knight saviour,  here to educate and save the simpleton locals?

 

Sounds like you're the fool.

 

Now, it is not good for the Christian’s health to hustle the Aryan brown,
For the Christian riles, and the Aryan smiles, and he weareth the Christian down;
And the end of the fight is a tombstone white, with the name of the late deceased,
And the epitaph drear: ‘A fool lies here who tried to hustle the East.’

[Dexlowe]

5 minutes ago, DLang said:

White Knight saviour,  

Ha, love it. So you think that if someone is hired to do a job that they shouldn't do it? My job was to raise standards in order for the company to be more competitive. Nothing whatsoever to do with the great white farang rescuing the ignorant natives. Myself and others took our duties seriously and faithfully, and with a great deal of equanimity. If you don't have any comprehension of how disappointing it can be, after pouring your heart and soul into your work, then you have no right to comment.

 

You need to distinguish between PC and reality.

[wildewillie89]

2 hours ago, Dexlowe said:

... and herein lies the rub. It is terribly depressing to encounter someone who refuses to acknowledge that you know more than him, even when no other Thais are present (this is an issue of the dreaded "face", tinged with racism). This refusal to learn and grow has left me exhausted.

 

That is very true, and, yes, I would it say has some elements of racism to it. However, once you can claim some sort of credibility to your family/friends, then the professional is no longer needed to back you up. Many educated Thais usually are of the belief that the 'farang' country is more developed and therefore has more research, but even though they are of that belief it still takes some time to adjust to do things differently.

 

The point being Thai can and do change if you can prove yourselves to them in an educated way. If a 'farang' is just some alcoholic, smoker who spends most his time in a bar....well would you blame them for not listening/changing?

[Dexlowe]

6 minutes ago, wildewillie89 said:

If a 'farang' is just some alcoholic, smoker who spends most his time in a bar....well would you blame them for not listening/changing?

You make some fair points -- but this one is slightly askew. I think this involves only a few professional workers that I've come across -- the vast majority are normal folk who may or may not enjoy a drink but are otherwise thoroughly professional in their work. The boozer farang stereotype seems to be quite a different beast to what I'm talking about - 

 

[Berkshire]

Hmmm, so the OP is saying sun exposure is perfectly safe, that "sunspots" are harmless?  Not sure if dermatologists would agree with that.  

 

[Sunspots on skin, called solar lentigines, are due to sun exposure. They are flat brown spots that show up on the parts of your skin that have been exposed to the sun. Once you start getting sunspot on skin, expect them to darken and increase in number with every UV ray that hits your skin.]

 

[...the presence of a lot of sunspots indicate that you have had more sun exposure than your skin can handle, which means that you are at increased risk for skin cancer in the areas with the spots. It’s safest to have an annual skin exam done by a dermatologist if your skin has a number of sunspots.]

 

https://www.drbaileyskincare.com/info/blog/what-causes-sunspots-on-skin#.WSKKYsYlGUk

 

Not saying everyone needs to avoid sunlight all the time because our body needs it to some degree.  But the Thais habit of avoiding direct sunlight is healthier than the farangs' habit of laying out in the sun trying to get a tan.   

[wildewillie89]

14 minutes ago, Dexlowe said:

You make some fair points -- but this one is slightly askew. I think this involves only a few professional workers that I've come across -- the vast majority are normal folk who may or may not enjoy a drink but are otherwise thoroughly professional in their work. The boozer farang stereotype seems to be quite a different beast to what I'm talking about - 

 

Took me a good few months to break my Thai family in (just used to laugh/ignore my ideas). However, the wife and I had just had a baby and got a puppy when we used to live with them, and I got sick not long after so we were constantly in and out of the hospital and vet clinics. Even if you're only half decent at researching (I had just graduated from back home), Thai doctors/vets will ask if you worked in the medical field back home. As the level of researching 'farang' do, usually trumps what Thai do. I will research peer reviewed journals, where as Thai generally research internet forums. So all of the 'extreme' ideas  I was coming out with of how to do things were naturally supported by the doctors/vets. Now daily life has changed from laughter to, ''what does Will suggest we do?'' 

Edited May 22, 2017 by wildewillie89

[1FinickyOne]

And how receptive might you be to adding chilli peppers to your Danish pastry?

[johnnybangkok]

The idea of skin whitening in Thai culture is much more to do with status than anything else (hi-so's are white therefore non hi-so's want to be white). This is not exclusive to Thailand though as even in the UK, it's exactly the same but in reverse.

In the 1950's/1960's rich people were the only ones that could afford to travel so when they returned from their 3 months in the South of France, they came back with a tan. Tan's were therefore associated with wealth and prestige and that has never really left the British culture. The ensuing knowledge about the damage the sun does to your skin coupled with increasing levels of skin cancer now results in that lovely 'orange' fake tan look that prevails throughout the UK. Thai's want to be white; British want to be brown. Go figure.   

[Thaimike370]

I cannot understand why Thai girls want to whiten their skin, in the UK girls are paying 7 thousand pounds and more to get a tan. I love the natural Thai girls with their various shades of brown, a Thai girl with a white face just looks like Coco the clown.  

[jeab1980]

44 minutes ago, Thaimike370 said:

I cannot understand why Thai girls want to whiten their skin, in the UK girls are paying 7 thousand pounds and more to get a tan. I love the natural Thai girls with their various shades of brown, a Thai girl with a white face just looks like Coco the clown.  

There in a nutshell you have it. White girls want to be brown and brown girls want to be white. Tall guys wish sometines they were a little smaller and small guys wish they were a little bigger. Flat chested girls want to have bigger boobs and big boobed women want smaller chest size. Get my drift. We all want to be diffrent to what we are sometimes. Take Michael Jackson as a prime example.

As for covering over more when the sun is out ditto i always cover everypart of my body when out in full sun all day, comon sense i would have thought.

Edited May 22, 2017 by jeab1980

[boomerangutang]

                                          Things should be done in moderation.  An English R&R band called 'The End' played clubs in Madrid when I was a teenager.  One of their songs had the line;   'Too much cake and ice cream, will give you a stomach ache / too many cups of coffee, will keep you wide awake.' 

 

                        Some sun on the skin is good for everyone.  Some folks, particularly when they get older, get one or more 'sun spots' if skin is exposed to direct sun for protracted time.  A slice of bread left too long in the toaster will start to get black spots.   ....and so on. 

 

                         The OP is mostly about advertisers and others in the skin whitening industry - telling lies to Thais (and reinforcing stupid ideas) in order to sell as much product as possible.   Granted, advertisers have been telling lies since the first pimp, about 232,309 years ago.   The laser surgery ad referred to in the OP takes shystering to a particularly low level.   It shows a young (around 19 yr old) pretty woman with blanched (photoshopped) skin, and has her saying that exposure to sun creates dark patches on her facial skin.   It's patently false, and contributes to unease among countless Thai youngsters.  Young folks are already insecure about dozens of things, so to create a new false insecurity for the purpose of duping them out of lots of money, ....is disgusting.   It should be illegal.  

 

                               But it will take a sea change in how Thais perceive of themselves and others.  I think, over time, many Thais will gravitate toward reasonableness on the issue of thinking; the whiter a person's skin is, the better and more attractive that person is.   

 

                            Already, in the past couple of decades, Thais have embraced some dark-skinned people as heroes.  Most prominent is Tiger Woods.  Honorable mention goes to H.Bolt, Michael Jordan and other sports stars as well as movie/TV stars, and music icons.   It's doubtful their parents' or grandparents' generation would have dared adulate a person with such dark skin.  For example, would Somchai's grandmother have put a poster of Jesse Owens or Harry Belafonte on her bedroom wall when she was a kid?  

 

                      Similar to problems in the M.East, the best way to find solutions is to influence little kids in right ways.   As long as parents'/guardian's attitudes are stuck in dumb-ass prejudices/ignorance, Thai kids will keep growing up with similarly stupid attitudes, ......and keep wasting tens of millions of baht each year on products which they hope will make their skin whiter.

 

 

[Shiver]

I know I'm not speaking alone when I say I love the pale caramel colour.  GF and self go for a walk in the sunshine.  I get lobster burn/scabbing and peel, and her body dealt with it already and changed colour, no drama for her.  She still prefers to keep covered up, but not to extremes.

 

My previous GF was a freak about colour, and would buy 'skin whitening' anything.  I say "do you understand that they (big brand names) are breaking laws of advertising claims on what this product will do?" and she would say "just advertising, nobody believe" (except they continued to fly off the shelf.

I think with my background I could make a decent cream that would get you to your natural lightest (i.e. those parts that never see the sun), but to get 'white' requires harsh chemicals and is not attractive or natural anymore than silicone is.

Bottom line: Be with people who are comfortable in their own skin as it is.  

Personally I like a bit of colour, much better than the Benidorm sun worshippers that look a year older than actual age each time the do it and can look 60 when they're 40.  Thais do better than that without spending a bean.

 

 

[habanero]

11 hours ago, Thaimike370 said:

I cannot understand why Thai girls want to whiten their skin, in the UK girls are paying 7 thousand pounds and more to get a tan. I love the natural Thai girls with their various shades of brown, a Thai girl with a white face just looks like Coco the clown.  

Having light skin shows that you are not lower class. Darker skinned people are associated with laborers, farmers, herdsmen. More in the line of the poor.

 

[boomerangutang]

                                It's ironic that, because of the title and content of this thread, ...a bunch of skin whitener ads show up all around, to accompany it.  

 

                                There's an industry that's even lower than skin-whitener industry which also dupes people on industrial scale.  Yet, the target little kids.  I'm referring to the slicksters who sell sugar-laden snacks to kids.  To me, they're worse than the seediest street corner drug dealers who peddle heroin.     At least the people who buy heroin and speed are usually adult-aged - so they can decide whether to ruin their lives.  Little kids can't decide about sugar-laden stuff.  They just love the sweetness and bright colors (and Tony the Tiger, and jingles, etc) that sugar is packaged with.  National Geographic declared sugar is addictive.   Ok sorry, I veered off-topic a bit.

[boomerangutang]

28 minutes ago, habanero said:

Having light skin shows that you are not lower class. Darker skinned people are associated with laborers, farmers, herdsmen. More in the line of the poor.

You're right, in describing ignorant people stuck in group-think.   Using that logic, here are some of the people who do slave-work outdoors all day in the hot sun

 

Michael Jordan, Tiger Woods, Martin Luther King, Michelle Obama.

 

......and here are some of the people who are superior, with their white skin:

 

Bernie Madoff, Donald Trump, Fat Boy Kim, 

[habanero]

1 minute ago, boomerangutang said:

You're right, in describing ignorant people stuck in group-think.   Using that logic, here are some of the people who do slave-work outdoors all day in the hot sun

 

Michael Jordan, Tiger Woods, Martin Luther King, Michelle Obama.

 

......and here are some of the people who are superior, with their white skin:

 

Bernie Madoff, Donald Trump, Fat Boy Kim, 

I was not comparing white people to black people.  Also, I was only speaking of Thai people. But, I think you know that!

[Shiver]

4 hours ago, boomerangutang said:

                                It's ironic that, because of the title and content of this thread, ...a bunch of skin whitener ads show up all around, to accompany it.  

 

                                There's an industry that's even lower than skin-whitener industry which also dupes people on industrial scale.  Yet, the target little kids.  I'm referring to the slicksters who sell sugar-laden snacks to kids.  To me, they're worse than the seediest street corner drug dealers who peddle heroin.     At least the people who buy heroin and speed are usually adult-aged - so they can decide whether to ruin their lives.  Little kids can't decide about sugar-laden stuff.  They just love the sweetness and bright colors (and Tony the Tiger, and jingles, etc) that sugar is packaged with.  National Geographic declared sugar is addictive.   Ok sorry, I veered off-topic a bit.

 

Come on.... every hi-so kid should have the opportunity to be pre-diabetic by age 4 :)

[maxcorrigan]

On 5/22/2017 at 1:09 AM, johnnybangkok said:

The idea of skin whitening in Thai culture is much more to do with status than anything else (hi-so's are white therefore non hi-so's want to be white). This is not exclusive to Thailand though as even in the UK, it's exactly the same but in reverse.

In the 1950's/1960's rich people were the only ones that could afford to travel so when they returned from their 3 months in the South of France, they came back with a tan. Tan's were therefore associated with wealth and prestige and that has never really left the British culture. The ensuing knowledge about the damage the sun does to your skin coupled with increasing levels of skin cancer now results in that lovely 'orange' fake tan look that prevails throughout the UK. Thai's want to be white; British want to be brown. Go figure.   

Maybe true, but the wealthy in the 1800's UK went out of their way to stay white, so as not to be confused with manual field workers and labourers, exactly what Thai people do today so as not to be thought of as manual workers, but a bit more hi-so, even when they are skint!

[Berkshire]

23 hours ago, boomerangutang said:

                                          Things should be done in moderation.  An English R&R band called 'The End' played clubs in Madrid when I was a teenager.  One of their songs had the line;   'Too much cake and ice cream, will give you a stomach ache / too many cups of coffee, will keep you wide awake.' 

 

                        Some sun on the skin is good for everyone.  Some folks, particularly when they get older, get one or more 'sun spots' if skin is exposed to direct sun for protracted time.  A slice of bread left too long in the toaster will start to get black spots.   ....and so on. 

 

                         The OP is mostly about advertisers and others in the skin whitening industry - telling lies to Thais (and reinforcing stupid ideas) in order to sell as much product as possible.   Granted, advertisers have been telling lies since the first pimp, about 232,309 years ago.   The laser surgery ad referred to in the OP takes shystering to a particularly low level.   It shows a young (around 19 yr old) pretty woman with blanched (photoshopped) skin, and has her saying that exposure to sun creates dark patches on her facial skin.   It's patently false, and contributes to unease among countless Thai youngsters.  Young folks are already insecure about dozens of things, so to create a new false insecurity for the purpose of duping them out of lots of money, ....is disgusting.   It should be illegal.  

 

                               But it will take a sea change in how Thais perceive of themselves and others.  I think, over time, many Thais will gravitate toward reasonableness on the issue of thinking; the whiter a person's skin is, the better and more attractive that person is.   

 

                            Already, in the past couple of decades, Thais have embraced some dark-skinned people as heroes.  Most prominent is Tiger Woods.  Honorable mention goes to H.Bolt, Michael Jordan and other sports stars as well as movie/TV stars, and music icons.   It's doubtful their parents' or grandparents' generation would have dared adulate a person with such dark skin.  For example, would Somchai's grandmother have put a poster of Jesse Owens or Harry Belafonte on her bedroom wall when she was a kid?  

 

                      Similar to problems in the M.East, the best way to find solutions is to influence little kids in right ways.   As long as parents'/guardian's attitudes are stuck in dumb-ass prejudices/ignorance, Thai kids will keep growing up with similarly stupid attitudes, ......and keep wasting tens of millions of baht each year on products which they hope will make their skin whiter.

 

 

While I understand your point--and don't necessarily disagree--I must point out that you're looking at things from a different perspective.  The truth is Thais are less obsessive about skin color and the whole "race" thing than farangs.  We from the west bring a whole lot of baggage when it comes to skin color because in our homeland, it's more about historical racism and discrimination.  The Thais look at skin color the same way they look at fat people, just another physical trait that they can tease one another about. 

 

White skin in Thailand is largely about feminine beauty, nothing else. 

[champers]

Can someone explain what snail whitening cream is all about? I have only really noticed it in the last 12 months or so. What part/s of the snail have the whitening effect?

[Andrew Dwyer]

Can someone explain what snail whitening cream is all about? I have only really noticed it in the last 12 months or so. What part/s of the snail have the whitening effect?

All of him except the shell !

[Andrew Dwyer]

Can someone explain what snail whitening cream is all about? I have only really noticed it in the last 12 months or so. What part/s of the snail have the whitening effect?

Apparently it's the secretion filtrate that has the " miracle " whitening effect.
Very big in Korea and most of SEA .
My gf sells it on the net !!

[champers]

4 minutes ago, Andrew Dwyer said:

Apparently it's the secretion filtrate that has the " miracle " whitening effect.
Very big in Korea and most of SEA .
My gf sells it on the net !!

I hope she gets it ready bottled. Some job to collect the secretions. I had it in my (somewhat warped) mind that snails were chucked into a blender, flick the switch and there you have it.

[Andrew Dwyer]

I hope she gets it ready bottled. Some job to collect the secretions. I had it in my (somewhat warped) mind that snails were chucked into a blender, flick the switch and there you have it.

Yes ready bottled [emoji16]
I did suggest I could " milk " the snails for their secretion but I don't have a WP !

Shhhhh, that's Colonel Sanders secret recipe you're talking about there [emoji51]

[Dexlowe]

1 hour ago, Andrew Dwyer said:

Shhhhh, that's Colonel Sanders secret recipe you're talking about there

[notmyself]

On ‎22‎/‎05‎/‎2017 at 9:10 AM, Dexlowe said:

Sorry, mate, but most Thais don't change on the advice of foreigners. That's not bashing, that's fact, and I know it from 3 (pointless) decades of trying to do so. 

 

Been a while since I read such utter trash. It has nothing to do with foreigners and all to do with reason and logic though not understanding this, what I would call a basic concept , is likely the reason why you have had no success in some 30 years.