CULTURE-FIJI: A Society Coloured by Skin Bleaching Creams

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Lili Tuwai

SYDNEY, Apr 3 1996 (IPS) - In the Western world in centuries gone by, Europeans craved for pure white skin. People with a splash of colour were regarded as lower class.

But while today in Europe the opposite holds true, with a tan indicative of health and wealth, in the Pacific island nation of Fiji, formerly a part of the British Empire, fair skin is in — at least that is what distributors of skin bleaching products are leading Fijians to believe.

“It’s a funny thing, isn’t it?” said John Delauney, Director of Medical Services at Sydney’s Skin and Cancer Foundation. “White people want to get tanned and a lot of the Indian population (in Fiji) want to be paler. We all want what we haven’t got — that’s the funny thing about human nature.”

To Westerners, it may seem an oddly fashionable trend in Fiji’s mixed race society where 50 per cent of the population is of Indian race — descendants of plantation workers who came to the Pacific early this century. The rest of Fiji’s 775,000 people are native Melanesians (43 per cent), Europeans and Chinese.

Like in many developing countries — not only in the Asia- Pacific region, but in parts of Africa, the Americas and the Caribbean, a fairer complexion can prove a tool for upward social mobility.

“For women in the marriage market the issue of complexion is a major issue,” notes Dr. Sainath, a women’s health activists in Fiji. “It’s a cultural thing, never mind that a man might be dark. The issue is that they expect to marry a woman who is fair, especially if it’s an arranged marriage.”

Local cosmetic shops and pharmacies report the sale of an increasing number of skin-bleaching creams in recent months and link the rise in over the counter sales to massive advertising campaigns by rival distributors.

“The type of advertising we are seeing is a typical media gimmick, but if women are not informed and empowered to make sound choices, they remain gullible,” said Dr. Sainath.

“Apart from unnecessary expense, many women get carried away by the promise of clearing blemishes and becoming fairer. Often, they don’t realise the model’s picture has been airbrushed to give her that smooth, flawless or fair complexion look.”

The trend raises a range of cultural, ethical and health related issues.

“Like any Third World country, the influence of Western products is having an impact our way of life,” said Inia Wele, an environmental health officer in Fiji’s ministry of health.

His immediate concern is about the potential harmful effects of the products in question although he said that as far as he was aware, the ministry is yet to carry out an investigation. “I would be interested in the toxicology of the skin bleaching products to see if they could be damaging to the body.”

As far as ethics in advertising is concerned, Delauney is unimpressed by the sales pitch that one of the active ingredients in the skin bleaching creams, the protein Elastin, is a “miracle cure” for skin ailments.

“To say that we can apply Elastin to restore elasticity is just like getting different components of a computer and putting them in a big box and saying ‘there’s a computer’. You have all the components of a computer, but of course you don’t have a computer that works.

“And to simply apply Elastin on the skin and expect that will do the job, it just doesn’t and can’t work like that,” he explained.

And while distributors are trumpeting the wonders of elastin, health experts are querying whether or not potentially harmful substances are deliberately being omitted from the list of ingredients carried on the product labels.

“In Fiji…they (the Indian population) are a group of people who easily develop pigmented area on their skin after injuries and sometimes for no apparent reason,” said Delauney.

Twenty years ago, research in Britain and the United States led to the banning of mercury in cosmetics while hydroquinone use was restricted to a maximum two per cent of the total product ingredients.

Both these chemical substances are active agents which were popularly used to inhibit the formation of melanin (pigment) in the skin, resulting in a lighter appearance.

But the research showed that one major ill-effect of these substances was that in inhibiting the growth of melanin producing cells, the skin became susceptible to ultra-violet radiation so that users were more likely to develop cancer.

Skin bleaching cream distributors in Fiji say their products do not contain mercury, however even if they do, Fijians would probably not find out till too late since licenced importers can import pharmaceutical and cosmetic products without hassle.

Fiji does have a ‘Poison Control Board’, but Sainath says this is hardly called into action and in any event is under-staffed and under-equipped.

“Sometime ago there was concern about the mercury content of the whitening creams. This attention led advertisers to claiming they have since omitted mercury from the creams, but we don’t have the facilities to check all the details of product contents,” said Sainath in a telephone interview.

“Unless there is consumer concern, people here tend to be less worried about this kind of advertising,” she added.

More than just health concerns, Sainath and other women activists in Fiji are worried about this colonial hang-over in which society has become so pre-occupied with its complexion.

They say it is in part fanned by the media which once portrayed the rice-powdered face of geishas with their porcelain complexion as a symbol of Japanese beauty. Similarly, beauty is associated with blond, blue-eyed Europeans.

In Fiji, as in other mixed race developing countries, skin colour takes on added significance in that whites of European descent are in the minority.

In a random survey, pharmacists contacted by IPS by telephone said it was mainly women of Indian descent who purchased skin bleaching creams — their inquiries about its effectiveness in getting rid of blemishes and in lightening their skin colour.

A dispensary assistant at Makkan Pharmacy in Suva however said that indigenous Fijians too buy the products. “The ratio would be about 60 per cent Indian women buyers to 40 per cent Malanesian) Fijians,” said the assistant who gave her name as Prasad.

She said most of the products sold over the counter by that pharmacy were imported from Australia and New Zealand. “These creams are very much in demand…people just go for it. We have about 30 sales in these products per week.”

One native Fijian consumer told IPS that she used the skin bleaching cream “to look more European” while an Indian consumer said: “I don’t use bleaching creams to be whiter, I just use them to be lighter in complexion”.