Beauty standards have long had a hold on popular culture. Beauty allows for people to advance in the social hierarchies of our societies, as well as provide a sense of self worth. The history of beauty can be described as a history of struggle, as society deems it more and more necessary to alter the physical, material body to meet social standards. Skin lightening is one of the most criticized beauty practices throughout the latest century. As a booming industry that is engaged across all socioeconomic levels, discourse around skin lighteners informs us about the changing meanings of skin color and how it affects racial hierarchies and anti-racism activism. Beneath The Surface looks into the transnational history of skin lightening practices through the perspective of South Africa and the United States and outward. 

Lynn M. Thomas’ main argument in Beneath The Surface is that bodily surfaces are vectors of antiracist struggles through its complications of skin meaning and privilege– especially in the time of aparthied rule in South Africa. She also describes how skin lighteners and other beauty practices both reinforce and challenge pre-existing assumptions about race, class, and gender. Thomas comes to the conclusion that “surfaces matter. The unrelenting presence of beauty practices in our globalized world stems from their ability to play on and reproduce a range of inequalities while, at the same time, offering hope and stirring feelings of self-worth” (Thomas 236). 

Lynn M. Thomas, co-editor of this monograph, is indeed qualified to discuss the topics of materialism and its effects on the concepts of race, class, and gender in our lives. Currently a history professor at the University of Washington, Thomas is known to be a historian of politics and gender in East and Southern Africa. She acknowledges her love for history due to her “desire to gain knowledge of the past in order to better understand the problems and possibilities of the present” (Thomas). tShe is best known for being the co-editor of The Modern Girl Around The World: Consumption, Modernity, and Globalization where she explores the rise of capitalist consumer culture, mass media, and its resulting new conceptions of race and gender. 

Through her uses of archives, popular culture trends, and oral history sources, Thomas traces the wavering opinions of skin lighteners and the varying meanings of skin color throughout time. In the first chapter, she examines indigenous and traditional practices on bodily surfaces. Smearing practices like the use of Tambookie grass and egg whites on skin as a method of lightening skin tones led to colonists labeling the natives as inferior for attempting to “whitein” themselves. White lead was also a popular skin lightener as it was commonly found in European portraits and used in Chinese and Japanese cultures.

Chapter 2 elaborates on the role mass media played in influencing South African consumers through the advertisement of skin lighteners. Local newspapers like Bantu World–the first South African newspaper to advertise cosmetics and include women sections– portrayed women in the “modern girl” stereotype that framed women as engulfed in self-indulgence and rejecting her duties. Bleeding into the next chapter, Thomas acknowledges how the success of African American cosmetic companies influenced how the skin lightening industry was perceived in South Africa and neighboring countries. There was a distinct difference between cosmetic use and racial respectability across the Atlantic, however, as South African beauty culture was dominated by black men discourse and run by white owned companies. In contrast with the United States, African American women controlled both the manufacturing and advertisement of their skin lightening and other cosmetic products. Chapter 3 expands upon the idea of growing black consumerism and how white South Africans dominated the cosmetic business in South Africa. Simultaneously emerging with the shifting dynamics of the industry were the concepts of race consciousness as ideas regarding color privileges became more evident, encouraging South Africans to pass for white using skin lighteners. 

Chapters 4 through 6 further elaborated on the impact mass media had on people’s changing perceptions of racial and gender hierarchies. Through magazines, film, and photography, the media began portraying lighter skin in association with success and opportunity, emphasized by Thomas’ comment: “Skin color, as one highly visible marker of race, loomed large in this world where whiteness was synonymous with power and privilege, and small differences in appearance could carry significant consequences” (Thomas 106). Meanwhile, criticism from medical professionals and anti-racist activists remained persistent in developing regulations for skin lightening practices in South Africa. From the medical standpoint, the discovery of hydroquinone as a new and “substitute” ingredient of mercury created more speculation about the safety of the products, ultimately leading to the ban of mercury based cosmetics and closer examination of over-the-counter products. As discourse around the health of consumers increased, so did conversations acknowledging the psychological damage of beauty desires on Black women. Criticisms between medical professionals and antiracism activists entwined eventually, leading to regulations on skin lighteners being set across South Africa.

The final chapter looks at the issues of the modern day and the nuances that come with the everlasting problems of racism and capitalism. Thomas points out the irony in the apartheid museum being located on top of an old, wealthy skin lightener manufacturing company. Instances like these prove that the skin lightening industry still has a hold on today’s society, and that the meaning and politics around skin color will continue to evolve and change.

The greatest strength of Beneath The Surface was Thomas’ ability to trace the altering meanings and understandings of skin color. Her attention to detail–the products, advertisement, manufacturing, target audience, usage, and health problems– it all relates back to how bodily surfaces were a focal point of racial identification and how people used skin lighteners to use that focus to their own advantage. It’s astonishing to realize that beauty practices can be such a destructive force, yet they will continue to be utilized and invested in as people continue to modify their physical appearance to fit into social desires. A weakness I believe to have found is Thomas’ lack of perspective outside of South Africa and the United States. Although South Africa is a unique viewpoint that allows us to analyze changing conceptions of skin color from colonial times to the postcolonial present, I think addressing other perspectives of African countries would bring more knowledge of historical beauty practices and develop more nuances among the practices and their relations to the cultivation of racial hierarchies.

I personally enjoy this book because of its unique perspective of skin lightening as an agent of disturbing the efforts of antiracist thinkers and activists. I never thought cosmetics would have such an impact on how we perceive racial and gender dynamics, let alone evolving beauty standards. 

References

“Department of History.” Lynn M. Thomas | Department of History | University of Washington, https://history.washington.edu/people/lynn-m-thomas. 

Thomas, Lynn M. Beneath the Surface: A Transnational History of Skin Lighteners. Wits University Press, 2020.