Jill Dahrooge

            In these chapters, skin color seems to be a worldwide problem.  The Color Complex, described by the author, does not necessarily relate to interracial marriages or African American women using hair straightening products or color contacts, it is more about an "individual that can make choices more freely and can better resist social practices and cultural attitudes that are meaningless and unfair." Most African Americans struggle with the stereotypes of their race.  As Evelyn Nakano Glenn describes it in "Yearning for Lightness", blackness symbolizes a lack of civilization, unrestrained sexuality, pollution, and dirt.   There is a popular trend (or even need) to look like European decent instead of Latino or African.  The pressures of having light skin not only stem from products and media produced by European countries but from the internal pressures of the white and black races.  Marriages are the creator of the skin coloring issue.  More commonly black men are married to white women than black women are married to white men.  Lighter skin tones comes across as having a higher social status.  Because of the historical struggle of the black race, black men feel as if they have "made it" and have turned out as "winners" because they have married into a higher status. Even though the women themselves might not be of a wealthier class, their skin color says otherwise.  Females appear to be the ones that are mostly targeted in this skin color problem.  Black women struggle to find spouses because of their dark and "dirty" skin tone, which relates nothing to their personality or social status.  However, lighter skin women do not have it easier either.   They are sometimes seen as trophies to black men and are used to be shown off.  In relation to this, white men who marry black women use these women to show off in a different manner.  Black women are seen as exotically different; therefore, a white man feels as if he has accomplished the impossible and has stepped outside of the normal boundaries, giving him self-satisfaction.  It appears that women are both the black or white race struggle with stereotypical judgments. 

            However, during the 1930s and the 1940s tanning became a new social craze.  Tan skin meant a person was of a higher status because they could afford to travel to tropical beaches.  But quickly, this craze ended because of the medical discoveries of sun damage that were made.  My question about these chapters is that if the tanning epidemic was quickly shut down because of medical issues why isn't the skin lightening epidemic decreasing also?  Skin lightening exposes people to large amounts of mercury yet products are still being widely sold and popularized.  If the medical troubles were taken more seriously, races would most likely be able to live in peace and the stereotypes would not continue.