“Do you wanna be white?”
That’s the question Korean skincare brand Elisha Coy is asking the public in this controversial billboard that appeared recently in the New York borough of Queens.
Check it out.
Because white skin is what makes everyone happy?
The poster was seen in New York’s New Koreatown Plaza in Flushing, Queens, advertising the ‘Nuddy complete correction CC cream’ reportedly gives people in the company’s market a whiter complexion.
Not surprisingly, the billboard has copped some criticism. Because – as The Daily Mail pointed out – it “clearly plays into its target market’s quest for lighter skin.”
Korean culture website Noonchi said, it’s the “perfect advertisement—it sells an impossible dream while also making its potential consumers feel worse about themselves.”
And then there’s this from Jezebel: “Maybe the advertising team forgot that this ad was scheduled to run in America where minorities are hyper-aware of race, colorism (even if they don’t know that word specifically, they know how it feels to be discriminated based upon skin color) and kind of like being their own ethnicity.”
Top Comments
I think the "white" vs other skin colours is a bit of personal choice, BUT there is another issue that maybe MM could look at. My partner is Asian and she knows (and i have met a few) many asian women who have had their eyes done. Apparently this surgery is huge in Korea, and many asian women in the west feel pressure to "westernise" their eyes. The surgery is about giving them a bigger eyelid (i dont know what the correct term is). When I first met one of these women, I asked my partner if she was partially blind or was in an accident. My partner laughed and said "no, she has had her eyes done". I asked why would one go through that? I had to explain that beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and if Hollywood had originated in Asia, western women would be having eyelid reductions. I will never work the opposite sex out.
when I was in the philipines (never can spell it right) 1997-2002 all cosmetics were labelled as whitening, skin bleaching, skin whiteneing etc. just about everyone I met and stayed with had some sort of skin whitening substence in their bathroom.