Spinoff; Tanning is racist: You're appropriating skin color

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Swedish company Emmaatan came under fire on Friday for selling a dark-colored self-tanner called “Dark Chocolate,” after pictures were posted to its social media pages that featured white models with skin that appeared to mimic black skin. With other products that have names like “Caramel” and “Dark Ash Onyx,” some black people argued that Emmaatan was yet another example of white people appropriating black features.

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Tanning is probably a widely accepted means of beauty enhancement and an admired beauty practice for lighter skinned women, but for dark women, it isn’t so harmless. There are some who would argue that skin lightening or bleaching is no different and, indeed, just as bad as tanning. How can dark skinned black women complain about white women tanning when they wear straight blonde weaves and use skin bleach, right? But skin lightening has often been an act tied to and influenced by the fact that European beauty standards are the ideal. The act of skin bleaching is usually an act of survival and assimilation by those whose natural skin color has been considered undesirable, ugly, and even a hindrance to upward mobility — a far cry from just another harmless beauty practice.

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