‘Skin Trade’: Genealogy of Anti-ageing ‘Whiteness Therapy’ in Colonial Medicine
Tóm tắt
This article investigates the extent to which the emerging trend of do-it-yourself anti-ageing skin-whitening products represents a re-articulation of Western colonial concerns with environmental pollution and racial degeneracy into concern with gendered vulnerability. This emerging market is a multibillion dollar industry anchored in the USA, but expanding globally. Do-it-yourself anti-ageing skin-whitening products purport to address the needs of those looking to fight the visible signs of ageing, often promising to remove hyper-pigmented age spots from women’s skin, and replace it with ageless skin, free from pigmentation. In order to contextualize the investigation of do-it-yourself anti-ageing skin-whitening practice and discourse, this article draws from the literature in colonial commodity culture, colonial tropical medicine, the contemporary anti-ageing discourse, and advertisements for anti-ageing skin-whitening products. First, it argues that the framing of the biomedicalization of ageing as a pigmentation problem caused by deteriorating environmental conditions and unhealthy lifestyle draws tacitly from European colonial concerns with the European body’s susceptibility to tropical diseases, pigmentation disorders, and racial degeneration. Second, the article argues that the rise of do-it-yourself anti-ageing skin-whitening commodities that promise to whiten, brighten, and purify the ageing skin of women and frames the visible signs of ageing in terms of pigmentation pathology.
Tài liệu tham khảo
Ahmed, Sarah. 1998. Animated borders: Skin, colour and tanning. In Vital signs: Feminist reconfigurations of the bio/logical body, ed. Margrit Shildrick, and Janet Price, 45–65. Edinburg: Endinburg University Press.
Anderson, Warwick. 1996. Disease, race, and empire. Bulletin of the History of Medicine 70(1): 62–67. doi:10.1353/bhm. 1996.0001.
Appadurai, Arjun (ed.). 2001. Globalization. Durham: Duke University Press.
Ashikari, Mikiko. 2005. Cultivating Japanese whiteness: The ‘whitening’ cosmetics boom and the Japanese identity. Journal of Material Culture 10(1): 73–91. doi:10.1177/1359183505050095.
Benthien, Claudia. 2002. Skin: On the cultural border between self and the world. Trans. Thomas Dunlop. New York: Columbia University Press.
Blaut, James M. 1992. 1492: The debate on colonialism, eurocentrism, and history. Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press.
Brenner, M., and V.J. Hearing. 2008. The protective role of melanin against UV damage in human skin. Photochemistry and Photobiology 84(3): 539–549. doi:10.1111/j.1751-1097.2007.00226.x.
Butchart, Alexander. 1998. The anatomy of power: European constructions of the African body. London: Zed Books.
Clarke, A.E., J.K. Shim, L. Mamo, J.R. Fosket, and J.R. Fishman. 2003. Biomedicalization: Technoscientific transformations of health, illness, and U.S. biomedicine. American Sociological Review 68(2): 161–194.
Eze, Emmanuel Chukwudi (ed.). 1997. Race and the enlightenment: A reader. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Foucault, Michel. 1994. The birth of the clinic: An archaeology of the medical perception. Trans. A.M. Sheridan-Smith. New York: Vintage Books.
Foucault, Michel. 2003. Society must be defended: Lectures at the College De France 1975–1976, eds. Mauro Bertani and Alessandro Fontana, general eds. Francois Ewald and Alessandro Fontana, English series ed. Arnold I. Davidson (trans: David Macey). New York: Picador.
Gerlach, N., S.N. Hamilton, R. Sullivan, and P.L. Walton. 2011. Becoming biosubjects: Bodies. Systems. Technologies. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
Gilman, Sander L. 1985. Difference and pathology: Stereotypes of sexuality, race, and madness. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
Global Industry Analysts, Inc. 2009a. Anti-ageing products: A global strategic business report (Report Code MCP-11-7). Retrieved from http://www.strategyr.com/Anti_Ageing_Products_Market_Report.asp.
Global Industry Analysts, Inc. 2009b. Skin lighteners: A global strategic business report (Report Code MCP-6140). Retrieved from http://www.strategyr.com/Skin_Lighteners_Market_Report.asp.
Global Industry Analysts, Inc. 2009c. Anti-aging products: A global strategic business report (Report Code MCP-11-7). Retrieved from http://www.strategyr.com/Anti_Aging_Products_Market_Report.asp.
Gosai, Anjana. 2010. India’s myth of fair-skinned beauty. The Guardian. Retrieved from http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2010/jul/19/india-fair-skinned-beauty.
Henning, Michelle. 1999. ‘Don’t touch me (I’m electric)’: On gender and sensation in modernity. In Women’s bodies: Discipline and transgression, ed. Jane Arthurs, and Jean Grimshaw, 17–47. London: Cassell.
Jacobson, Matthew Frye. 1998. Whiteness of a different color: European immigrants and the alchemy of race. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Jesús, Attilio. 2005. China’s new faces. Le Monde diplomatique. Retrieved from http://mondediplo.com/2005/06/17beauty.
Johnson, Ryan. 2008. Commodity culture: Tropical health and hygiene in the British Empire. Endeavour 32.2: 70–74. doi:10.1016/j.endeavour.2008.03.001.
Johnson, Ryan. 2009. European cloth and ‘tropical’ skin: Clothing material and British ideas of health and hygiene in tropical climates. Bulletin of the History of Medicine 83.2: 530–646.
Khan, M.T.H. 2007. Molecular design of tyrosinase inhibitors: A critical review of promising novel inhibitors from synthetic origins. Pure and Applied Chemistry 79(12): 2277–2295.
McClintock, Anne. 1995. Imperial leather: Race, gender and sexuality in the colonial context. New York: Routledge.
Mire, A. 2005. Pigmentation and empire: The emerging skin-whitening industry. Counterpunch. Retrieved from http://www.counterpunch.org/mire07282005.html.
Mire, A. 2012. The scientification of skin whitening and the entrepreneurial university-linked corporate scientific officer. Canadian Journal of Science, Mathematics and Technology Education 12(3): 272–291. doi:10.1080/149261.2012.679993.
New Beauty SPA+™. 2013. A better image for a better you. In New Beauty SPA+™: Jennie Garth Cover, ed. Yolanda Yoh Bucher, 1.1. New York and Florida: Sandow.
New Beauty, 2010. Touch the miracle. In New Beauty: Fall-winter 2010, ed. Yolanda E. Yoh, 6.4. New York and Florida: Sandow.
Osuri, Goldie. 2008. Ash-coloured whiteness: The transfiguration of Aishwarya Rai. South Asian Popular Culture 6(2): 109–123.
Parr, Hester. 2002. New body-geographies: The embodied spaces of health and medical information on the internet. Environmental and Planning D: Society and Space. 20: 73–95.
Petersen, A., and K. Seear. 2009. In search of immortality: The political economy of anti-aging medicine. Medicine Studies 1(3): 267–279. doi:10.1007/s12376-009-0020-x.
Rose, Nikolas. 2007. The politics of life itself: Biomedicine, power, and subjectivity in the twenty-first century. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Seiberg, M., C. Paine, E. Sharlow, P. Andrade-Gordon, M. Costanzo, M. Eisinger, et al. 2000. Inhibition of melanosome transfer results in skin lightening. Journal of Investigative Dermatology 115: 162–167. doi:10.1046/j.1523-1747.2000.00035.x.
Spindler, M., and C. Streubel. 2009. The media and the anti-aging medicine: Witch-hunt, uncritical reporting or fourth estate? Medicine Studies 1: 229–247. doi:10.1007/s12376-009-0028-2.
Stoler, Ann Laura. 2000. Race and the education of desire: Foucault’s history of sexuality and the colonial order of things. Durham: Duke University Press.
Stoler, Ann Laura. 2002. Carnal knowledge and imperial power: Race and intimate in colonial rule. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Villarama, C.D., and H.I. Mailbach. 2005. Glutathione as a depigmenting agent: An overview. International Journal of Cosmetics Science 27.3:147–153. Retrieved from http://www.superwhiteningpills.net/glutathioneandskinwhitening.html.
Winterich, J.A. 2007. Aging, femininity, and the body: What appearance changes mean to women with age. Gender Issues 24: 51–69.