KZBlog

Another foray into Cosmopolitian, Kazakhstan edition (I read it for the articles) led me to an ad for Garner Light, a skin whitener. Full disclosure: The ad pictured here isn’t the exact ad printed in the Cosmo I read. I was disturbed that l’Oreal felt that there was a market for skin whitener in Kazakhstan.

In Russian there is an expression, “like white people” which means to do something like normal people, in the proper way. Before a night of drinking several years ago, a Kazakh friend of mine once surveyed the table full of snacks like anchovies, pickles, sausage, croutons, ham and pig fat and said, “Now we are sitting down like white people.” I laughed because of course white Americans don’t eat any of these things when drinking, but he explained that in this case “white” had no racial undertones. When I see ads like this one, I wonder how much that is true. Do Kazakhs really feel whiter skin is more beautiful or is this a big mistake?

Of course in light of this study by CNN, I can’t condemn internalized racism on the part of Kazakhs too much.