Reconstruction 7.1 (2007)
Return to Contents, The state, Race, Nationalism, Colonialism»
The Whitening of Brown Skins and the Darkening of Whiteness [1] / Elaine Laforteza
Abstract: This paper draws on the interrelation of whiteness and Orientalism to provide a framework for examining the use of skin-bleaching lotions and soaps by some Filipino men and women. Through this focus, I investigate the ways in which skin-bleaching negotiates the "threatening" existence of brown flesh upon the contours of Filipino bodies and within the corpus of western(ised) nations. These threats are negotiated through the skin wherein various chromatic inflections of the flesh become processed as a part of or a threat to normative comfort zones. Skin-colour is thus the site of and for discursive construction and a domain of material consequence. These characteristics of skin-colour and their deployment and resignification of whiteness and Orientalism are what I explore in this paper. For this, I divide the paper into three sections. The first maps how Spanish colonialism in the Philippines fostered an aesthetic hierarchy that privileges a mestiza/mestizo look. Further, I track how North American control of the Philippines deploys a geo-political hierarchy that promotes Americanised social systems. I argue that both hierarchical structures are fostered through the rubric of Orientalist whiteness. The second section complicates the cohesiveness of the authoritative position of Orientalist whiteness by showing that "non-whites" performatively enact whiteness through skin-bleaching. In the third section, the indeterminacy of skin lends itself as a tenuous means of totalising subject positions. Ultimately, this paper tracks the ways in which whiteness and Orientalism deploy specific racialising practices that package certain bodies/spaces as threats to normative individual, national and international social orders. While these strategies may push for a preference for whiteness and Orientalism to govern bodily practices, it simultaneously resignifies how whiteness and Orientalism are perceived.
<1> In Australia, it is not a rare occurrence for me, a Filipina migrant, to be seen through white Orientalist blinders. Every "bloody Asian" that gets hurled at me is a verbal assault, symbolically pushing me to get out of the white zone, go back "to my own country" and remain separate and distinct from white Australian bodies. This is despite the fact, that in many cases, the people who stigmatise me hear my voice, my normative Australian English, accented with an assimilated tone. Or perhaps the racial taunts occur because I sound Australian, while my exterior appearance connotes that I "naturally belong" to a "non-white" space. In both these circumstances, I am judged on the dark surfaces of my flesh which is deemed as threatening a dominant national imaginary predicated on the normalised supremacy of whiteness. Simultaneously, I am threatened to the extent that people feel entitled to order me out of Australia. Although these verbal abuses do not literally move me away from within the nation, I am moved to a categorical location simply known as Asia/n, thus collapsing multiple Asian identities into homogeneity (Said 177).
<2> I argue that situations such as the one aforementioned are formed by and deploy an interpenetration of whiteness and Orientalism that fosters specific racialising practices and knowledges. In this paper, I draw on the interrelation of whiteness and Orientalism to provide a framework for examining the use of skin-bleaching lotions and soaps by some Filipino men and women to lighten their skins. Here, I do not focus solely on the face, but on all the chromatic surfaces of the flesh. Through this focus, I investigate the ways in which skin-bleaching negotiates the "threatening" existence of brown flesh upon the contours of Filipino bodies and within the corpus of western(ised) nations. These threats are negotiated through the skin wherein various chromatic inflections of the flesh become processed as a part of or a threat to normative comfort zones. Skin-colour is thus the site of and for discursive construction and a domain of material consequence. These characteristics of skin-colour and their deployment and resignification of white Orientalism are what I explore in this paper.
<3> In implicating whiteness as a structural force within skin-bleaching practices, I draw on Suvendrini Perera's conceptualisation of whiteness as a:
Palpable, material, and eminently quantifiable category against which those to be excluded were measured...The state and the bodies of its citizens were explicitly constructed in and through their relation to whiteness, establishing a hierarchy of belonging and entitlement (30).
<4> Although Perera's statement refers to the constitution of a racially exclusionary "White Australia," I extend her conceptualisation to implicate whiteness as foregrounding the motivations that deploy skin-bleaching practices. Whiteness is thus the yardstick in which categories of difference are defined against (Perera 31). The whiteness I specify as the aesthetic ideal for Filipinos is a mestiza and mestizo complexion. In Tagalog, mestiza literally translates to a "half-breed" that is biologically female. Mestizo describes a "half-breed" that is biologically male. In most cases, Filipinos use these words to indicate a male or a female who has a mix of "Filipino" blood and a "lighter" skin tone, such as that possessed by white Europeans. This mix is idealised within the Philippines and Filipino diasporic dispersions [2].
<5> For Filipinos with a "darker" blood lineage, the word baluga is used. This word translates to a "half-breed" with black (such as African) blood. Symbolically, the word baluga operates as an indicator of negativity. For instance, baluga equates to being tamad, a slothful creature. The formulation of progression thus steers away from having black skin. In a racialised scaling of aesthetic, intellectual and economic prowess, whiteness reigns supreme while brownness sits on the lower rungs of normative social structures. Blackness does not have a place in this hierarchy, but is relegated to a position outside the normative social order (Gaborro 1). Hierarchical racial positionings ensure that Blackness haunts the subject constitution of individuals trying to be, or trying to remain acknowledged as mestiza/o [3].
<6> In context to the intercultural contact between "brown Asians" and "white Westerners," a key discursive strategy of whiteness becomes Orientalism which invests in a colonial discourse that uses racial identifications to fix knowledges about nations/subjects (Childs and Williams). This is not to indicate that all relations of this kind deploy whiteness and Orientalism, but in context to skin-bleaching, whiteness and Orientalism are usually complicit in sustaining the importance of skin-bleaching practices. Skin, in this context, is seen as having a mimetic relationship to subjectivity and can accurately denote a person's geo-political, socio-economic and socio-cultural status.
<7> I argue that skin-bleaching, in context to Filipino consumption, is used to curb the threat of brown coloured flesh that within white Orientalist social structures is recognised as an inferior racial other. A racial and geo-political hierarchy is thus endorsed wherein Manichean distinctions are employed through the separation of a white western dominant "us" and a subordinate "non-white" "them." Social status within such a hierarchy is based on whether individuals are recognised as threats to the authoritative position of whiteness. Social mobility, in this case, becomes tied to being recognised as a non-threatening body that affirms the dominant status of white identity [4]. White Orientalism sets the limits for visibility and audibility (how "non-whites" are seen and heard and whether they are seen or heard at all).
<8> Bleaching skin, in this context, separates oneself from the "mass" of brown bodies that are recognised as bulking up the Orient. Here, threat arises from the chromatic surfaces of one's flesh. Therefore, skin-bleaching works to bleach the body out of its "brown existence". Reconfiguring one's body shows a strident effort to become enmeshed in international socio-cultural and geo-political systems that are predominantly powered by westernised agendas. The menace of brown skin thus comes from the fear of being forgotten (forgettable) as a productive member of national, regional and international arenas. In this context, threat extends beyond the individual and becomes a material menace to the constitution of the nation's permutations of culture(s) [5].
<9> To examine these trajectories of threat on (and evoked by) the skin, I first track the historical context of how skin-bleaching came to be an accepted practice in the Philippines and within Filipino diasporic dispersions. Here, I explore the ramifications of Spanish and US colonial control in and of the Philippines, which includes the idealisation of Filipinos with physically apparent white ancestry and/or a mestiza/o aesthetic.
<10> Secondly, I complicate this relationship by showing that cosmetic skin-bleaching does not simply subjugate Filipinos in relation to white bodies, or that Filipinos are bound to Orientalist norms that typify them as inferior. Rather, cosmetic skin-bleaching also re-articulates the socio-cultural codes that position whiteness as an untouchable identity and Orientalism as a strategic racialising practice that cannot be challenged and embodied by those construed as non-white or not white enough. Here, I engage with Homi K. Bhabha's conceptualisations of mimicry and ambivalence to argue that the authoritative position of whiteness and Orientalism are threatened by "non-whites" and "Orientals" inflecting the spaces of white Orientalism.
<11> Thirdly, I explicate that despite skin lightening, bleaching products cannot deny that a Filipino body is not "purely" a white body, or (in the case of a mestiza/o Filipino), a "pure" white, brown or black body. Therefore, skin-colour cannot accurately state a person's race and ethnicity, or typify a person as belonging to a homogenous racial or ethnic category. The recognition of dark skin as a "natural" threat is emphasised as socially constructed [6].
The Historicised Body: La Vida Española
<12> Spanish colonial rule spanned from the year 1521 to about the year 1898. During this time, Spanish imperialism reconceptualised Philippine society and culture. Spanish explorer, Ruy López de Villalobos named the islands of Samar and Leyte, " The Philippines" after King Philip II of Spain (Arcilla S.J. Introduction to Philippine History a 7) . The name was soon applied to the entire archipelago (Arcilla S.J. Introduction to Philippine History a 7). This naming fixed Filipinos as a monolithic identity that lives under and by Spanish governance. Consequently, the validity of different ethnic groups and their practices and beliefs were elided. The Philippines was seen by the "first world" as an extension of western rule. Such a hold over the Philippines enabled Spanish ideologies to shape Filipino consciousness. This produced an aesthetic scaling of bodies that was predicated on idealising Spanish initiatives.
<13> High social status within this scale depended on whether one was Castilian-Spanish or mestiza/o. Light(ened) skin was/is a status symbol and the mix of white and brown connoted the progress of Spanish colonial initiatives. Mestiza/o identity, in this context, was not perceived as blighting whiteness but was evidence of the power of whiteness and westernisation to re-invent the world. Such thinking did not acknowledge that brownness destabilises whiteness. Instead, an Orientalist focus configures mestiza/o identities as evidence of the power of white westerners to transform those around them, while Oriental others passively allow this to occur.
<14> What helped to instigate such an aesthetic scaling of bodies was/is the implementation of an amo class. During the time of Spanish colonialism, the amo class consisted of Spanish friars and conquistadors who established freehold property rights that enabled them to appropriate the land for themselves ( Arcilla S.J. Introduction to Philippine History b 8). Appropriation of land enabled the Spaniards to behave as masters of the native people. Consequently, indigenous Filipinos became the katulong to the Spanish amo.
<15> In Tagalog, the word amo translates as master. The word katulong means helper, but in relation to an amo, katulong means servant. Asymmetrical relations of power are thus inscribed within the definitions of amo and katulong. Despite this, MA Fe Hernaez Romero states that a harmonious relationship occurred between the amo landlord and the katulong farmhand and servant. Romero contends that:
The young landlord and the growing farmhand were playmates and partners...as children and even when as adults they occupied different social and economic positions the cordiality remained...Under such an atmosphere...grew the primacy of loyalty [and gratitude] to the landlord (Hernaez Romero 50, 51).
<16> Deference for white power continues in more contemporary contexts, as demonstrated in the stories of Filipinos. Although the white people in these narratives do not necessarily have Spanish blood or heritage, they are still white bodies from a "first world" western context. Because of their geo-political specificity, these white bodies are experienced as today's amo within many contemporary Filipino socio-cultural realities.
<17> Marie Carbonell, a Filipina, recounts her memories of her Filipina yaya (Tagalog word for nanny). Carbonell states that her yaya was overtly respectful towards Carbonell's white British stepfather, while failing to show the same degree of respect to her Filipina mother. This was despite the fact that Carbonell's mother was the person who hired her yaya and paid her wages. Money came from her mother, not her stepfather, yet more respect was conferred to the white stepfather. This attribution of respect naturalises white bodies as authoritative figures. Consequently, the title of amo becomes conflated with whiteness, despite the fact that the white person may not be in the position of primary power within the relationship. A prominent socio-cultural class is thus associated with being white. However, a difference in exhibited respect could also be read as occurring because of the gender differences of Carbonell's parents. The yaya could be offering more respect to the white step-father because he is male, yet this argument fails when put in context with how the yaya responded to white women and Filipino men. Carbonell reiterates:
When with other Filipinos, regardless of whether they were male or female, my yaya would frown, complain, or fail to listen to what they said. When with my step-father and his white friends, my yaya would be all smiles, constantly asking them what they wanted. She'd serve herself on a platter if that's what they desired.
<18> What Carbonell offers as a valid object of analysis is also indicative of the privileging of white bodies over brown Filipino bodies. Carbonell chooses to interrogate her nanny's actions, rather than explore how her stepfather was and could be implicated in the amo-katulong relationship. Nowhere in her recollections of the interactions between her yaya and step-father was her step-father questioned or critiqued. Her yaya's propensity to serve "herself on a platter" is not observed as being encouraged or discouraged by the step-father. It is only the yaya's behaviour that is noticed. The nanny's body is thus designated as the site for surveillance, being watched and regulated by the people around her. In this context, her bodily space has function and validity only within the context of an "all-seeing" eye, a panopticon-like gaze that fixes the nanny's body as a site for spectacle, of blatant visibility.
<19> The position of Carbonell's step-father, as the husband of the employer, and the position of her nanny, as the employee, drives Carbonell's scrutiny to be placed on the nanny. This is because Carbonell is a family member of the employer and therefore of the amo class. In this context, the "upper class" polices the "lower" classes to ensure that they are "doing their job" (Carbonell). In the Philippines, the "upper class" is predominantly white, related to a white person by law or blood, or mestiza/mestizo. According to Dr. Anne Cranny-Francis, during a visit to Manila, she noticed that those who were recognised as upper-class and those who were wealthy were Castilian-Spanish or had western ancestry. To be seen as mestiza/mestizo thus indicates a high socio-cultural status. Even if this were not the case, the mestiza/mestizo individual would be seen as having a better chance of attaining socio-cultural ascendency in contrast to someone who did not look mestiza/mestizo. Whiteness thus carries race privilege and socio-cultural capital.
<20> For instance, the stepfather's white body is placed in a position of privilege that allows him to escape scrutiny. White bodies, in this context, are placed in an elevated position that marks them as naturally authoritative, and thus can and should remain an unnameable and unnamed component and instigator of power. The white body becomes disarticulated as a body. Instead, it becomes an amorphous space that cannot be made accountable for its fleshed realities, its corporeal complicities, its bodily being. White bodies are thus recognised as omnipotent figures whose bodies, actions and thoughts are sacrosanct. According to Eleanor Goddard, a Filipina woman living in Sydney, Australia, this deification of white bodies is common for Filipinos. She states: "If you're white in the Philippines, you're God" ( Personal Interview a). Consequently, within the normative social order of the Philippines and within Filipino minds, miscegenation and contact between whites and Filipinos is looked upon as advantageous [7]. This is because whiteness alleviates the negative connotations of other markers of identity that would constitute oppression within normative white western social structures.
<21> "White" or "like white" people in the Philippines do have a better economic situation or a chance of attaining a better economic standing than the majority of Filipinos in the Philippines [8]. Moreover, the countries where these white people come from have a vast economic advantage over the Philippines. Such economic realities enable the fixing of white bodies as sites of advantage and power.
<22> Although mestiza/o is a descriptor for a hybridised identity, of skin borders blurring and intermingling, the category of mestiza or mestizo, as well as the mestiza/o body, is marked in clear gender categories: male and female. This intimates that the mestiza/o body, although a disruption of certain body roles, still narrows identity into specific norms. This response reflects the standard designations for the mestiza/o body, in that, most Filipinos conceptualise and experience mestiza/os as "finished" identities, a being, not a becoming. The mix of white and brown does not connote that a person is becoming white, but that the person is neither white or brown, but both. The mestiza/o embodies the blurred boundary, but in such a way that fixes this rupture as an end to itself, not as a means of further border crossing.
<23> This mestiza/o body is privileged because it signifies such a fixity, a knowable embodiment of Filipino culture being "modern" and "progressive" through its mixing with white western bodies and spaces. As a child, the privileging of "white blood" and light skin inflected how my playmates and I were demarcated from one another. For instance, all my family friends in Australia had Filipina mothers and white fathers. Within the Filipino community, they were praised for their mestiza/o bodies. Conversely, my body was never defined as a site for and of attractiveness. Instead, my body was ordered to "stay out of the sun," not so much to protect myself against ultra-violet rays and skin cancer, but in order to protect myself from the threat of "getting darker". In this context, mestiza/o identity instigates a differentiation of bodies based on Manichean distinctions. The mestiza/o is beautiful and a marker of progress, while the "non-white" Filipino body is not. Here, mestiza/o identity is not a threat to the racial purity of whiteness, but instead reifies the importance of whiteness in bettering the "brown race."
<24> When another "mixed-blood" child entered my circle of family friends, I thought that she would be another example of beauty that I could never live up to. However, she did not garner the same kind of compliments that the other children received. After my initial confusion, I realised that she did not look like the other mixed blood children. Her skin was lighter than mine, but her hue was more sallow than the other "nearly white" children. She did have "mixed-blood" in her genetic composition, but this did not consist of an intermingling of white and brown. Her father was Filipino, while her mother was Chinese. It was then that I learnt that within normative Filipino dictates of aesthetic beauty, only "white" western blood mixed with Filipino blood produces supreme god-like beauty. Being maputi (Tagalog word meaning to literally look white) is thus made synonymous with being western and westernised.
<25> This idealisation of a westernised mestiza/o look instigates the desire to cosmetically bleach skin. Belle V. Bondoc, a writer for the online Filipino newspaper, Inquirer News Service, describes the impulse to cosmetically bleach skin as directly related to wanting to maintain or physically embody a (western) white and whitened body. Bondoc articulates a privileging of whiteness that makes skin-bleaching necessary in maintaining and producing "kissable skin" (2004). She equates "white skin" with "good" skin and describes the darkening of complexion after the repeated use of skin-bleaching products as a worst-case scenario. She writes:
Most skin whitening formulations work only superficially, which means bleaching the upper layer of the skin but leaving it unprotected from harmful elements. Thus even after repeated use, the skin can return to its natural color and, worse, even darken the complexion once the skin is exposed to the sun (1).
<26> Nowhere in her descriptions are the harmful effects of the sun related to skin cancer. What is considered harmful is the possible darkening of the skin or the re-appearance of a brown complexion. Dark skin, in this context, is conflated with degeneracy and danger; it has the capacity and capability to threaten the bodily integrity of individuals with lighter skin. Further, the envisaging of dark skin as re-emerging ("can return to its natural color") demonstrates a fear and anxiety about the instability of mestiza/o whiteness to remain as an unwavering power, totalised as authoritative and "good." This emphasises a need for mestiza/o whiteness, to control, regulate and establish borders between being mestiza/o, kayumanggi (brown), itim (black), and baluga.
<27> The patrolling of borders, and the need to contain the unfixity of the skin, can be evidenced through cosmetic skin-bleaching. For instance, Kris Aquino, the daughter of former Philippine president, Cory Aquino, uses her celebrity status as a popular television host to advertise that part of her beauty routine is to use Kissa Papaya Plus Whitening soaps and lotions. Aquino says:
I was very blessed to have a skin this white...I'm very thankful to my parents for that, but what Kissa can do for me is really to maintain the quality of my skin. For other people who want to improve their skin, it really whitens the skin. It's really a good product (1).
<28> Improvement in this context is equated to desiring white(ned) skin and to the disavowal of brown coloured flesh. Here, white(ned) complexions are fixed as naturally progressive, thus relegating dark skin tones into an oppositional and subordinated position in relation to whiteness. White skin is thus perceived as a gift ("I am very blessed to have skin this white"). Such a perception has material effects as light skinned individuals do attain certain socio-cultural privileges. These include high paying jobs, as well as being recognised as aesthetically important within normative social structures. Consequently, products that lighten the skin are "good products" that produce power and authority. Dero Pedero, a Filipino writer for the online newspaper, Philippine Headline News Online, writes:
Every day we are bombarded by advertisements where the light-skinned girl gets the admiring stares, the fair mestiza lands the job, the fairer girl gets the man. Notice the billboards that literally gobble up the highway [in Manila]. Plastered on them is either some blond foreigner or the pale, smiling face of a local mestiza movie star. To be a model or an actor in this country, you have to be tisoyin or tisayin meaning, on the fair side (never mind that you can't act!) (1).
This "whiter is righter" (Carbonell) attitude is reiterated and emphasised through the privileging of North America in the Philippines and by Filipinos.
The Historicised Body: Americanization
<29> As a first-grader in 1990, I attended Poveda Learning Center, a school located in Manila, Philippines. Here, General American English (GenAm English) was spoken in five out of the seven subjects first graders had to study [9]. These subjects included Math, Physical Education, Phonics, Spelling and Geography. The remaining two subjects were: Sibika at kultura (Tagalog words which translate to society and culture), which was taught in Taglish, a hybrid language of Tagalog and English. The subject matter here was the Philippines and its relation to western nations such as the US and Spain. Spanish was the second subject which was not taught in Tagalog, but was taught in English and Spanish. How to speak Spanish was the subject at hand. Although languages other than English were incorporated in these lessons, GenAm English remained a predominant feature. Furthermore, the subjects that entailed learning about the linguistic structuring of words (such as spelling and phonics) focused on learning the nuances of GenAm English. This was despite the fact that Filipino was and is the national language of the Philippines, a language that is heavily based on Tagalog. However, the silencing of "Filipino" accents was encouraged in favour of giving "voice" to an American tone in shaping verbal communication.
<30> Tagalog was displaced as the most important language to learn, although, in daily life, Tagalog was needed in interacting with other Filipinos in the Philippines. The belief was that Tagalog could be taught at home, therefore the teaching of and speaking in Tagalog were not necessary to employ in schools. However, some students did not come from Tagalog-speaking backgrounds but came from households that spoke other Filipino dialects such as Ilokano, Bisayan and so on. These students faced difficulties in communicating with the Filipino world outside their families and the schoolyard. In my case, I was brought up in a predominantly Ilokano-speaking background with little opportunity to speak Tagalog. Now, although I can understand Tagalog, I find it difficult to speak the language. My tongue is still inhibited, unable to speak the Tagalog words that were displaced in favour of another tongue. Tongue in this case, does not simply signify language, but refers to the physical tongue as well. My tongue stumbles over Tagalog words as if my tongue has hit physical roadblocks. It becomes an embodied reminder of the need and desire to distance oneself from being comfortable with a Tagalog language. This symbolic "bleaching" of the tongue subdues the threat of being unable to attain monetary and socio-cultural privileges that English fluency provides. Speaking English becomes a cultural capital that allows English speakers to be recognised as "non-threatening" within Americanised socio-cultural contexts and therefore as worthy of earning money in a western market economy.
<31> Privileging GenAm English was exacerbated by its status as the compulsory language that students had to speak in school, whether in class or in the playground. To revert to any Filipino dialect, would incur a monetary fine. Taking money away from students who did not speak English ensured that money was the focus of such exchanges. Speaking English meant that money could not be taken away from the students and therefore students could "own" the right to maintain their monetary allowances. This ownership of money connects English with financial stability and relegates Filipino languages as hurdles to "owning" the right to make and keep funds.
<32> Specific racial induction strategies (such as the compulsory teaching of English) are thus utilised in order to socialise subjects into inhabiting specific racial roles. One such racial induction strategy endorses the policing of others to ensure that they are conforming to the norms that are recognised as securing the nation. Policing can be evidenced through the means in which Poveda students upheld the dominant social order at the expense of alienating friends and making Filipino dialects taboo. I remember a school friend, Trina, complaining that she had been "caught" speaking Tagalog to one of her friends and was fined for failing to adhere to the school codes of "proper" conduct. The people (me included) who she told this to were not angry with the teacher who meted out this punishment. Our anger was directed at Trina, frustrated at her for being "so stupid."
<33> This symbolic "bleaching" of the tongue packaged our bodies as assuming a specific bodily image as right. This image being a normative white American body, complete with the "right" accent and language. Sara Ahmed writes: "When assuming a bodily image, subjects hence also assume the burden of particular bodily others with which that image is already inflected" (Ahmed "Embodying Strangers" 90). In this circumstance, the "burden of particular bodily others" is a "home" body. A "home" body, in this context, indicates a body that has validity within micro social groups such as family.
<34> In our case, this "home" body that uses Filipino dialects becomes othered through the systematic socialisation of subjects into assuming a white "American" body image. However, the assumption of the image "does not lead to the securing of the contours of the 'subject'" (Ahmed "Embodying Strangers" 90). What eventuates is a lack of containment, the failure of fixing the flesh into knowable categories. Other means of embodying a specific bodily image is required. This is in order to emphasise the otherness of the "home" body and to reiterate a normalised superiority of the public/international body. By doing this, social subjects implicate themselves as an integral part of the public and international sectors of Americanised global life. Lightened skin, in this context, becomes an important part of packaging oneself as beautiful in an Americanised context, and useful enough to be productive (that is to generate money) in a western market economy.
<35> This (re)assertion that one is a part of a dominant international (mainly US) agenda, is asserted through the cosmetic bleaching of skin. According to Sander L. Gilman, in the US, the desire to aesthetically alter the body through practices such as skin lightening is "directly shaped by the notion of fitting into a niche of an acceptable 'American' physiognomy" (Gilman 108). In Gilman's context, the face is the site for assimilation, but for the purposes of this paper, I focus on the lightening of facial skin, as well as the skin on the rest of the body. To do this, I concentrate on Doctor O's (name has been changed to protect his privacy) experiences with the skin-bleaching cream, Lyna.
<36> Dr. O is a Filipino nephrologist in the US who uses Lyna every week in order to visibly mark his skin as clean and white. In the predominantly "white" North American medical profession, skin-bleaching enables Dr. O to become "one of them." "Them," in this case, refers to a normative white American body, white professional and intellectual. His physical appropriation of white skin "compensates" for the fact that he is a Filipino migrant. In this context, although he can be visibly marked as crossing the border between east and west, between "white" and "non-white," his light skin posits him as already a (whitened) westerner, not as a dangerous transgressor. Skin-bleaching thus packages the Filipino body as Asian, but not too Asian, and therefore, as a body that registers familiarity within a normative white social order (Ahmed "Embodying Strangers" 92).
<37> Skin-bleaching, in this context, is used to posit a specific identity, bodily image, and as naturally embodying certain characteristics. For example, Dr. O lightened his skin in order for him to be seen as a "natural" doctor, because his "non-whiteness" makes him feel racially suspect. In this context, his other identifications, such as his maleness, do not secure his role as a doctor. If it did, he would not feel the need to bleach his skin to assert himself as a doctor. Repetitive bleaching indicates the performative consequence of skin-bleaching, in that skin-colour is continually altered in order to ascribe to specific norms.
Ambivalent Performative Possibilities and Realities of Skin-colour
<38> Judith Butler defines performativity as:
[A] regularized and constrained repetition of norms. And this repetition is ...what enables a subject and constitutes the temporal condition for the subject. This iterability implies that 'performance' is not a singular 'act' or event, but a...ritual reiterated under and through constraint, under and through the force of prohibition and taboo, with the threat of ostracism and even death controlling and compelling the shape of the production (95).
<39> This definition of performativity can be evidenced as an embodied experience that is reiterated through the practice of cosmetic skin-bleaching. Dr. O's weekly use of Lyna demonstrates that the manipulation of skin-colour is a ritualised production, reiterated through the force of being seen as a threat within a normative white western social order. The use of Lyna thus enables him to be a beautiful, productive, intelligent body that can be safely processed as belonging to normative US society and culture. Skin-bleaching, in this context, reifies whiteness as the dominant subject position.
<40> As aforementioned, skin-bleaching becomes a ritual that staves off negative socio-cultural consequences, thus eradicating the possibility for symbolic and literal violence to be enacted onto the brown body by other bodies. Symbolic violence is meted out through the disadvantages encountered by brown bodies in a white social order. For instance, the colour of Dr. O's skin could act as a barrier for future patients in that people could hesitate to be Dr. O's patient, or reject him as their doctor.
<41> Symbolic violence is thus symbolic in the sense that what is "killed" is the opportunity for Filipino bodies to embody a high social status in the workplace. Instead, their bodies become essentialised as always and already subordinate and degenerate. Brown/browner bodies thus become the shadow beasts of a normative white other: the dark and primitive body to a white/enlightened modern mind.
<42> "Real" death ("real" in the sense that the physical body stops functioning) is also avoided through the reiteration of positing skin as white/whitened. Visibly "non-white" bodies in westernised contexts can and do become killed because of what their skins signify within a normative social context: a "race" different and aberrant from a familiar and "right" social order [10]. Mimicking the normative practices of those recognised as "white" and "western," to the point of "editing" skin-colour, thus becomes a survival strategy that allows individuals to be processed as safe. Mimicry, in this context, is not simply a process in which people copy dominant practices in order to be like those recognised as the dominant norm. Rather, mimicry is a process deployed not to be like, but to live like those recognised as safe within normative social orders.
<43> Prohibition for physically appearing other than white demonstrates the necessity to reiteratively mark the skin as white/whitened and to assimilate bodies into a generalised white and western(ised) "face" that speaks highly of the nation that houses these individuals (Ahmed "'She'll Wake up One of These Days and Find She's Turned into a Nigger' Passing through Hybridity" 93). Active implementation of a visual coding based on distinguishing racial differences reveals the construction of how bodily images are perceived. For instance, the normalisation of white privilege has codes that signify its status and how it should be experienced and articulated. Whiteness is thus visibilised as a system, a (re)production, a construct and construction. Because of this, whiteness can be articulated as somebody/bodies that are permeable, pliable and open for reconceptualisation.
<44> The performative possibilities of skin-colour also show how whiteness, as an ideal, is constructed through systems of societal regulation. It is important to remember that although such binary separations are constructs, they have material consequences that are enacted onto bodies and deployed by bodies. As a result, Manichean distinctions between white and brown, mestiza/o and "full blood" Filipinos can be visibilised as historically malleable and culturally contextual categories that can be resignified by intersubjective and interbodily contact. Normative characteristics conferred to "white" and "non-white" people can thus be reconceptualised. Such a movement can be evidenced through "non-whites" performatively enacting and epidermally embodying whiteness through cosmetic skin-bleaching. "Non-whites" cross the Manichean divide and become both the other and the same (as well as neither the same nor the other). This border crossing and complex (dis)embodiment implicates bodies as performative categories/roles that can be disarticulated and re-signified.
<45> Although, whiteness is upheld as an ideal, ambivalence inflects this upholding of whiteness. By bleaching skin, the "pale" hues of "white" or mestiza/o bodies are mimicked. According to Bhabha, such mimicry is ambivalent because it requires a similarity and difference: "a difference that is almost the same, but not quite" (Bhabha 86). However, mimicry also produces destabilising effects on the "original." "Mimicry results in fantasies of menace, but this is a menace that is produced by (or forced upon) the colonized" (Childs and Williams 130). I argue that menace is not simply produced, or forced upon those who are "colonized," but colonial subjects produce and force reductive racialising practices that constitute certain bodies as threatening the normative social order. "Colonized" peoples are not simply at the mercy of (neo)colonial imperatives and are not solely being produced through them.
<46> Traditionally, Orientalism is a system deployed by the "west" to manage the "Oriental east." But, as can be evidenced through the skin-bleaching practices of some Filipinos, Orientalist norms are produced and reiterated by them. In this context, Orientalism is deployed by individuals not conventionally recognised as the purveyors of Orientalism. The scope of Orientalism thus extends beyond a deployment of power by "white western" individuals, and implicates "non-white Oriental" people as deploying Orientalist norms. Identity/subjectivity thus cannot be fixed to certain locales and people as sameness slides into otherness and vice versa (Childs and Williams 130). Such "unfixity" threatens the politics of identity endorsed by normative social structures, as a challenge to normalized knowledges of colonized and colonizer is deployed (Bhabha 131).
<47> The possibility for disarticulation posits fluidity within performativity. In this context, performativity can occur through, and deploy, a re-shaping of constraints. This in turn resignifies fixed norms within dominant discourses. For instance, cosmetic skin-bleaching does not always position Filipino bodies (or bodies with "Filipino blood") as oppositional and subordinate to white bodies. The idea that Spanish colonialism and US imperialism decree standards of beauty that Filipinos conform to, imply that western powers are the subjects who see and observe. They are the ones who control Filipinos within their imperialistic gazes. Yet, this "looking" does not simply flow from the western power to the supposed non-western subordinate. Rather, the "other" actively sees white bodies and desires them. This desire propels the use of skin-bleaching products to produce light skin, not only as another body/skin, but also as one's own flesh. Such a desire displaces white bodies from a position of being the only bodies whose systems of looking have material consequence and validity. In Foucault's terms, Bhabha speaks of "the process by which the look of surveillance returns as the displacing gaze of the [supposedly] disciplined, where the observer becomes the observed" (89). Mimicry, in this context, is not experienced through colonial dependency, but in terms of menace, a disruption to colonial authority (Childs and Williams 131). The basic right to be and become, in this context, is not mediated solely by white Orientalism. Cosmetic skin-bleaching thus exacerbates the multi-linear trajectories of power that are organised through and by the body. Through tracking these trajectories of power, I am not trying to specify whether cosmetic skin-bleaching is right or wrong. Rather, I am interested in exploring how racialised perceptual practices package the skin and people's intersubjective experiences.
Conclusion: Colour Slippages, Liminal Bodies
<48> Bleaching soaps and lotions, however, do not (re)make a Filipino body as a white body or package a mestiza/o body as forever white or brown. For instance, although Dr. O's skin is lighter than most people in his family, he is not mistaken as a "full-blood" white when he encounters strangers, friends and co-workers. The attempt to embody a desired race and aesthetic ideal is not embodied fully; rather, slippages occur. In this respect, skin-colour is revealed as a superficial signifier of one's identity, racial heritage and subjective capacities and capabilities. The slippages that occur through cosmetic skin-bleaching reveals that skin cannot be typified as static, even if the designations for its chromatic surfaces are homogenising categories.
<49> The fact that skin-colour is experienced through and by geo-political, societal, and historico-cultural norms and events, demonstrates that perceptions about skin-colour cannot remain unchanged. Instead, skin-colour, and what it connotes, always engages with societal and subjective constructions of the "self" and the "other." Skin-colour is thus an intersubjective and interbodily experience that is (re)conceptualised through time. A collection of work from leading scholars, Thinking Through The Skin, argues that skin is a site where bodies become validated as specific beings with specific roles. Bodies and their chromatic surfaces are thus already written upon by the norms of society and culture, but are simultaneously open to endless re-inscription (Ahmed and Stacey). Skin, then, is a border that sustains the separation between racial types, but skin is also a point of alignment. It is the place where one touches and is touched by others (Ahmed and Stacey). Light coloured skins are thus not the only skins that can influence, but browner skins can, and do, influence the spaces of whiteness.
<50> In the context of the chromatic surfaces of the body, skin-colour cannot remain unaffected, with or without the use of cosmetic skin-bleaching. By the sun and fire, skin can burn, tan, freckle, and sweat. Skin can be touched by shame: reddening, glowing pink, growing hot. Skin can be punctured, torn, scratched, fondled, kissed, beaten. From this, the skin becomes black(er), brown(er), blue, red; colours dropped in haphazard patterns onto the body, a messy palette of life's engagements with the world. Bruises, blood, scars, tears, milk, snot, spit, sperm, sweat. All these come out from the skin, colour and add colour to the skin, pass by the skin. These secretions that slide over and drip from the skin also produce a "second skin": a scab, a slippery coating of sperm, a sticky cover of snot, of tissue, of tears, of stitches, band-aids. Skin and its colour(s) are thus always (re)touched. They exist in constant states of liminality, are constant liminality. This is because skin is the border, the surface, the boundary that feels. Consequently, processes of touching, of being touched, of not being touched, of not touching, colour and shape the skin.
<51> Skin, therefore, embodies a constant position of "in betweeness" and is forever marked by hybridity. This hybridity ensures that skin consistently shuttles within and between positions, thus disrupting the notion of boundaries and of fixed, totalised states of being. Rather, the hybrid potentials of skin reveal the impossibility of subject positions to be fixed as static unified wholes.
<52> This unfixity can be evidenced in the paradoxical consequences deployed through cosmetic skin-bleaching. First, the totalisation of bodies and skin occur through the idealisation of a fixed notion of what constitutes whiteness. Second, the destabilisation of norms eventuates through cosmetic skin-bleaching. For instance, Dr. O's desire for white skin, and all the privileges that white skin confers, shows that the normalised "othered subject" returns the gaze given by the supposed powerful, "all-seeing" subject. Further, the "othered" not only returns the gaze, but also initiates his/her own strategies of looking that re-articulate the subject's position.
<53> As explored in this paper, this unfixity is not simply predicated on conceptual models, but is (re)created on and through bodies. This fluidity is acted out and acted by the flesh, the performative and porous skin. As skin-colour is packaged as signifying whether an individual posits a threat to normative social orders, the basis of where threat comes from is a slippery signifier that can be reconfigured.
<54> Ultimately, this paper articulates the ways in which bodies are mediated through specific geo-political, societal, and historico-cultural contexts. Such transitions demonstrate that cosmetic skin-bleaching occurs according to ideals of the "beautiful," "powerful," "productive" and "safe" individual/national/international body. For some Filipinos, lightening skin allows them to be processed as naturally belonging to a western(ised) ethos, a citizen of a wester(nised) global village, and therefore as a "safe" body that does not threaten normative western(ised) social orders.
<55> Cosmetic skin-bleaching also reconceptualises what occurs through the embodiment of ideals. Skin-colour becomes a removable and replaceable signifier that can be re-touched to show a preference for whiteness but to also deploy resistances that resignify how whiteness is perceived. How bodies touch and how they are touched occupy liminal positions that open up to constant change. This is important to realise in order to implicate skins, bodies, identities, subjectivities, as able to defy categories of being. Instead, the ways in which bodies are experienced should always involve multi-linear processes of becoming that extends beyond normalising knowledges that define specific skin-colours as threatening individual/national/international imperatives.
Works Cited
Ahmed, Sara. "Embodying Strangers." Body Matters: Feminism, Textuality, Corporeality. Eds. Avril Horner and Angela Keane. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2000. 85-97.
---. "Embodying Strangers." Body Matters: Feminism, Textuality, Corporeality. Ed. Avril Horner and Angela Keane. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2000. 85-97.
---. "'She'll Wake up One of These Days and Find She's Turned into a Nigger' Passing through Hybridity." Performativity and Belonging. Ed. Vicki Bell. London: Sage Publications, 1999. 87-106.
Ahmed, Sara, and Jackie Stacey. Thinking through the Skin. London: Routledge, 2001.
Aquino, Kris. In Belle V. Bondoc. "Kris Aquino and Her Kissable Skin". 4 August 2004. Inquirer News Service. 30 July 2006. <http://www.inq7.net/lif/2003/aug/05/lif_2-1.htm>.
Arcilla S.J., Jose S. Introduction to Philippine History a. Manila : Ateneo de Manila University Press, 1994.
---. An Introduction to Philippine History b. Manila: Ateneo de Manila University Press, 1998.
Bhabha, Homi K. The Location of Culture. London: Routledge, 1993.
Bondoc, Belle V. "Kris Aquino and Her Kissable Skin". 4 August 2004. Inquirer News Service. 30 July 2006. <http://www.inq7.net/lif/2003/aug/05/lif_2-1.htm>.
Butler, Judith. Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. New York and London: Routledge, 1990.
Carbonell, Marie. "Personal Interview." 21 Nov. 2004.
Childs, Peter, and Patrick Williams. An Introduction to Post-Colonial Theory. London Prentice Hall, 1996.
Cranny-Francis, Anne. "Personal Communication." 4 Oct. 2006.
Gaborro, Allen. "Seeing Brown and Black in a Clearer Light". 28 Dec. 2005. Philippine News Online. 15 Sept. 2006. <http://www.philippinenews.com/news/view_article.html?article_id=562873d3bf57d561df38cde35fc0375f>.
Gilbert. "Personal Communication." 8 Sept. 2002.
Gilman, Sander L. Making the Body Beautiful: A Cultural History of Aesthetic Surgery. New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1999.
Goddard, Eleanor. "Personal Interview a." 10 Nov. 2005.
---. "Personal Interview b." 14 Sept. 2006.
Hernaez Romero , MA Fe. Negros Occidental between Two Foreign Powers (1888-1909). Philippines: Negros Occidental Historical Commission, 1974.
Minh-ha, Trinh T. Woman, Native, Other: Writing, Post Coloniality and Feminism. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1989.
Pedero, Dero. "Kuyumanggi: Brown and Proud." 6 July 2003. Philippine Headline News Online. 28 July 2006. <http://www.newsflash.org/2003/05/si/si001593.htm>.
Perera, Suvendrini "Who Will I Become? The Multiple Formations of Australian Whiteness." Australian Critical Race and Whiteness Studies Association Journal 1.1 (2005).
Reese, Johannes. "Varieties of English around the World: North America." 1993. 3 Sept. 2006. <http://reese.linguist.de/English/america.htm>.
Said, Edward. Orientalism: Western Conceptions of the Orient. London: Penguin Books, 1995.
Notes
[1] I would like to thank my reviewer for all their feedback on this paper. Also, my thanks go to Dr. Goldie Osuri, Eleanor Goddard and Dr. Maria Aurora Carbonell Catilo for their advice on earlier drafts of this paper. [^]
[2] Through the idealisation of mestiza/o bodies, a hybridised whiteness is presented as an authoritative subject position. Although whiteness is mixed with a "darker" blood-line, this mix is not seen as sullying whiteness within normative Filipino social contexts. Aesthetically speaking, a mestiza/o look is what is aimed for when skin-bleaching, not necessarily a Caucasian look. However, it is western whiteness, as specific values, norms and behavioural attributes (e.g. civilised, intellectual) that is sought for when trying to embody a mestiza/o appearance. Caucasian aesthetic appearance is thus not necessarily the look aspired for, but it remains a model of beauty that connotes progression and development. Further, Caucasian lineage is still needed in creating beautiful Filipino bodies, as to be recognised as mestiza/o is to indicate that one has Caucasian blood. [^]
[3] I am not indicating that those who bleach their skin are necessarily prejudiced towards those who are visibly dark. There are many Filipinos who have Black ancestry and many Filipinos make connections with those who are recognised as Black. See: SPAN, Aims and Constitution of Solidarity Philippines Australia Network (Span), 1996, Available: http://cpcabrisbane.org/SPAN/Aims.htm, Feb. 8 2006. [^]
[4] By "white identity" I indicate specific groups of people who have been conceptualised as white within normative western and "non-western" social orders. Here, I am not trying to state that whites are a monolithic group devoid of ethnic conflations. For example, Italians and the Irish are subject positions that are sometimes classified as white, not white enough, or not white at all. Further, issues such as socio-economic background, gender, age, (dis)ability and sexuality inflect how white subjects experience their identities, and how these identities fit into the normative social order. However, in respect to white Orientalist discourses, identity/subjectivity is mediated through a white western perspective, making western whiteness the definitive position that calls identity into being. [^]
[5] Threat, in this circumstance, is experienced by some Filipinos as the threat of being a threatening body. Being recognised as a threatening body jeopardizes chances for socio-cultural and geo-political ascendancy on national and international levels. Here, it is the Filipino body that becomes the site of threat and anxiety that must be policed in order to conform to a mestiza/o identity. However, it is also whiteness that needs to be governed in order to retain its dominant status. This focus on shaping whiteness shows that it is not solely Filipino "brownness" that can be resignified. Whiteness is reconfigured by those recognised as "non-white" touching and appropriating the spaces of whiteness. Filipino use of skin-bleaching accoutrements extends the scope of whiteness and Orientalism, reconfiguring their untouchable status. Threat, in this context, arises out of the resignifications and deployments of whiteness and Orientalism. Brownness as a threat to Filipino social mobility and as a threat to white Western authority arises from Orientalist distinctions deployed through the rubric of whiteness. [^]
[6] Here, the destabilisation of what is considered "natural" or the "norm" is reiterated through my use of quotation marks on words such as "natural," "white" and "Orient/al." These quotation marks textually visibilise the indeterminate positions they seek to contain. They show that categories such as "Orient/al" cannot define bodies, thoughts and actions as homogenous, but rather, these categories open a plethora of possibilities that stretch the bounds of their normative discursive positions. In this, I use quotation marks to challenge the rigid definitions normatively given to "white," "Orient/als" and other subject positions that are consigned as already constituted. [^]
[7] When asked whether it made a difference whether the "white" person was in a low socio-economic bracket, Goddard responded that: "Those things don't really matter. To be seen as white means you have wealth. Even if the white person is supposedly poor, they cannot really be poor, not like the poverty in the Philippines. White people's poverty is very different to the poverty in the Philippines" (Personal Interview b). When asked whether disability would handicap the cultural currency of whiteness, Goddard replied: "Filipinos would still see disabled white people as amo, because they are white" (Personal Interview b). Whiteness as the carrier of privilege can be evidenced in much of Disability Studies wherein the white body is taken as the generic body in question. See: Lukin, Joshua. "Black Disability Studies". 2006. Institute on Disabilities: Temple University. With regards to gender, males and females carry race privilege. The feminised white body, for instance, carries aesthetic privilege as it is the dominant norm for beauty, as can be evidenced in the dominance of white women as models for beauty in mainstream media across the globe. In much of dominant feminist dialogues, the generic "female" body is implicitly white. Even in some instances when white women seek to assist non-white women, this assistance eventuates along conditional terms stipulated by the white social order. Trinh T. Minh-ha specifies that although non-white women are invited to speak at feminist academic forums, these forums circulate on whiteness as the normative "speaking" position (1989). Further, the white/whitened body as the standard model of beauty can be evidenced in the remarks of those who identity as homosexual or heterosexual (see modelminority.com). According to Gilbert, a gay Filipino man, the desired sexual match for most gay male Filipinos would be "big, butch and blond". [^]
[8] For more information, see: Capistrano, Tricia. "Emil's Big Chance Leaves Me Uneasy." Newsweek 19 June 2006: 14. [^]
[9] The British, Irish and, to a lesser extent, the Scottish influenced the speech of present-day North America. Three distinct linguistic areas thus arose: "in New England (with New York playing a special role), the South, and the rest which is known as General American" (Reese). General American English (GenAm English) is experienced and conceptualised as the language that acts as a gateway for Filipinos to enter and profit from national and international flows of economic power. As a result, the teaching of GenAm English became a compulsory practice in many Philippine schools from the onset of US colonial control, which began around the year 1898. [^]
[10] For examples of attempts to expunge supposed "non-white" bodies from a "white" zone, go to: http://www.themodelminority.com/journal/2003-08.html. [^]
Return to Top»