Dangerous Skin Whiteners Thrive from Asia to California

August 3, 2010 -- Monica G. doesn't dwell that much on her looks.

She is slender, and has long, dark hair and dark eyes, just like many other Indian women do.

She also shares something else in common with Indian women.

"If I have one hangup about my looks, it's my dark skin," said Monica, who lives in Salt Lake City. She didn't want to use her real name. "People tell me that I'm pretty, but I have dark skin."

She said that's something that drives many women into Indian-owned shops to buy skin whiteners.

"Mothers don't want their daughters or their daughters-in-law to be dark-skinned," she said. "Fair-skinned women are considered to be more beautiful."

Companies are taking advantage of this quest for lighter skin. For example, there's a Facebook application developed by Unilever, the manufacturers of Vaseline-brand products, that allows men to upload their photos and see what their faces would look like if their skin were lightened. It's part of a marketing campaign for their line of products especially for men.

"Much like self-tanning products in North America and Europe, skin lightening products are culturally relevant in India. In India, men use these products to lighten and even out their skin natural skin tone and to reduce the appearance of spots while protecting their skin from the sun," Unilever wrote in an e-mail. Unilever also makes a product called "Fair and Lovely," a skin lightener sold and marketed in India.

But Indian men and women are not alone in their quest for lighter skin. Global Industry Analysts, a research firm, predicts that the worldwide market for skin lighteners will surpass the $2 billion mark in the Asia-Pacific region by 2012. East Asians are among the biggest consumers of skin lighteners -- a survey by Synovate, a market research firm, found that 4 out of 10 women in several Asian countries use skin whiteners.

And even in Mexico, the skin lighteners abound -- a trend that suggests lighter skin may be an obsession among some groups in North America as well.