White is beautiful. Or at least it is in Vietnam where skin-whitening creams sell like hot cakes and women wrap themselves up like mummies whenever they venture outside.
Arm-length gloves made of a combination of lycra and cotton are essential accessories for women across the country as they zip around city streets on their motorbikes.
Hat, sunglasses and a colorful handkerchief tied gangster-style across the face complete an outfit fashioned to beat the skin-browning rays of the tropical sun.
Today, as has been the case for centuries, beauty in the minds of most Vietnamese woman means white skin -- a symbol of femininity, pureness, sophistication and high social class.
Dark skin, on the other hand, still conjures up images of poverty and peasants toiling in paddy fields, exposed to the unforgiving elements.
"I want my skin to be white because I think it is beautiful," said Dang Thi Ngoc Nga, a 31-year-old office worker at a state-run company in Ho Chi Minh City.
"But I also want to protect myself from the from the sun and its ultra-violet rays which are dangerous," she added before zooming off on her scooter at a busy intersection in the southern business capital.
Since the late 1990s, middle-class women throughout Vietnam have adopted similar protective measures as rising household incomes enable them to spend more time and money on their personal appearance.
More recently, government warnings about skin cancer and the exponential rise in pollution levels due to the millions of motorbikes on the roads have further encouraged the trend to cover-up every inch of exposed flesh.
But Vietnamese women are not alone in their desire to achieve a perfectly white complexion.
Throughout Asia, from Japan to India, pale skin is considered a sign of beauty. Indeed, skin considered too dark can often be enough to derail potential suitors in arranged marriages among middle-class families on the Indian sub-continent.
Not surprisingly, beauty salons and companies specializing in skin whitening products enjoy a captive and lucrative market.
Kim Loan, director of the Japanese-owned Chao Spa salon in Ho Chi Minh City, says the desire for white skin has yet to be affected by the country's rapid exposure to western culture and fashions.
"In Europe and other western countries, tanned skin is considered healthy, beautiful and a sign of expensive living, but here most people still want to have white skin," she said.
Even for those fortunate enough to have access to a swimming pool, heat-relieving dips are unthinkable until the sun has begun its late afternoon descent.
There are, however, signs of change.
In trendy cafes and bars in Vietnam's fashion-setting metropolis, some women are turning heads with their dyed blonde hair and golden tans.
Tran My Hanh, a 24-year-old amateur model and fashion shop owner, recently died her hair back to a more conservative brown color from a daring honey blonde. But her skin remains tanned.
"We women all like to have a fair complexion, and that in Vietnam means white skin. But these days there are more and more girls with tanned skin like me. It is not because we don't like white skin, but because it is easier to get brown than white," she said.
"I had to choose between off-white skin that looked unhealthy and tanned skin which I think looks healthy. I much prefer being tanned," Tian said.
But she concedes there is a fashion statement to be made too.
"It is stylish to be different, and besides, Westerners like it," she said.
Right-wing political scientist Laura Fernandez on Sunday won Costa Rica’s presidential election by a landslide, after promising to crack down on rising violence linked to the cocaine trade. Fernandez’s nearest rival, economist Alvaro Ramos, conceded defeat as results showed the ruling party far exceeding the threshold of 40 percent needed to avoid a runoff. With 94 percent of polling stations counted, the political heir of outgoing Costa Rican President Rodrigo Chaves had captured 48.3 percent of the vote compared with Ramos’ 33.4 percent, the Supreme Electoral Tribunal said. As soon as the first results were announced, members of Fernandez’s Sovereign People’s Party
MORE RESPONSIBILITY: Draftees would be expected to fight alongside professional soldiers, likely requiring the transformation of some training brigades into combat units The armed forces are to start incorporating new conscripts into combined arms brigades this year to enhance combat readiness, the Executive Yuan’s latest policy report said. The new policy would affect Taiwanese men entering the military for their compulsory service, which was extended to one year under reforms by then-president Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) in 2022. The conscripts would be trained to operate machine guns, uncrewed aerial vehicles, anti-tank guided missile launchers and Stinger air defense systems, the report said, adding that the basic training would be lengthened to eight weeks. After basic training, conscripts would be sorted into infantry battalions that would take
GROWING AMBITIONS: The scale and tempo of the operations show that the Strait has become the core theater for China to expand its security interests, the report said Chinese military aircraft incursions around Taiwan have surged nearly 15-fold over the past five years, according to a report released yesterday by the Democratic Progressive Party’s (DPP) Department of China Affairs. Sorties in the Taiwan Strait were previously irregular, totaling 380 in 2020, but have since evolved into routine operations, the report showed. “This demonstrates that the Taiwan Strait has become both the starting point and testing ground for Beijing’s expansionist ambitions,” it said. Driven by military expansionism, China is systematically pursuing actions aimed at altering the regional “status quo,” the department said, adding that Taiwan represents the most critical link in China’s
EMERGING FIELDS: The Chinese president said that the two countries would explore cooperation in green technology, the digital economy and artificial intelligence Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) yesterday called for an “equal and orderly multipolar world” in the face of “unilateral bullying,” in an apparent jab at the US. Xi was speaking during talks in Beijing with Uruguayan President Yamandu Orsi, the first South American leader to visit China since US special forces captured then-Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro last month — an operation that Beijing condemned as a violation of sovereignty. Orsi follows a slew of leaders to have visited China seeking to boost ties with the world’s second-largest economy to hedge against US President Donald Trump’s increasingly unpredictable administration. “The international situation is fraught
RSS