They're both imitations of status symbols
"wealthy people can stay inside while poor people work in the sun" vs. "wealthy people can vacation in sunny countries while poor people stay home in the cold"
"wealthy people can stay inside while poor people work in the sun" vs. "wealthy people can vacation in sunny countries while poor people stay home in the cold"
It's not that it is a sign of wealth due to leisure. People who work outdoors are tanned too. It's the warmness. The glowing. The gradients. Something impressed upon me at a young age that this is the standard of beauty.
When I'm in Asia and I see people carrying umbrellas and doing skincare, their skin looks clinical and less appealing to me than those who aren't doing it. I logically know the anti-sun regime is healthier for their skin, but my primate brain tells me it's unattractive.
It's unfortunate that increasing melanin production from the sun causes DNA damage. Because it looks so good to me.
There are a variety of drugs that induce pigmentation or melanocyte production, but none are FDA approved. Most of them can lead to cancer, either by uncontrolled cell proliferation, impact on unrelated cell populations, or disrupting normal hormonal signalling.
Melanotan-II was popular some years back, but there are half a dozen others that use a variety of different mechanisms. None of them are approved.
It's unfortunate that we haven't developed something better than exposing ourselves to DNA damage, but it's probably not the biggest priority.
Like sometimes I watch American news and the fake tans are just yucky and kind of gross to me.
Same with western women I see in Asia occasionally, age in 20s but looks easily 30+ while it's the opposite with many Asians. Eastern Europeans tend to avoid the sun more.
It's very much the case that in the Philippines, lighter skin is viewed as upper class haciendero/mestizo culture (not having to work outdoors, not being a nanny, maid, or "helper"). It's the same in many other Asian cultures. Women who live in Asian countries with a high concentration of plastic surgery "procedures" and treatments (like South Korea, for instance) are often the standards of beauty for other Asian countries even though such procedures/whitening and eye/nose surgeries are out of reach.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5664932/#:~:text=9....