Bali beauty regimen

Upon returning to Bali after three years, I'm aware I've put on weight and I'm definitely feeling older. I was a bit concerned about this, because they pull no punches in Bali. They'll tell you to your face you're more "gemuk" (fatter) than you were last time they saw you. But, as it turns out, no worries! It is the general and unanimous (and, of course, unasked for) consensus here, from the mountains of Ubud to the beaches of Lovina, that I look "younger and more beautiful" than I did before. Why you may ask? What is my beauty secret? Well, it turns out that my "skin is whiter" (no tan 'cause I just got off the plane) and I no longer have "those dark spots." (Heck, I always thought my freckles were cute.) This should not have surprised me, I suppose, given the fact that every other ad on TV here is for skin whitening cream, and they go so far as to artificially lighten the film in most TV shows and all commercials so the actresses look paler than Casper. It's always a stark contrast when the news comes on showing people with normal, healthy Indonesian skin tones.

This preoccupation is not because Indonesians want to look like white people or due to vestiges of colonialism. On the contrary. I'm not sure about the rest of Indonesia, but I'm pretty sure the Balinese are completely convinced they are the most beautiful people in the world. (They have a good argument.) The roots of this pale skin obsession are older than colonialism, harking back to the distinction between royalty and the priestly classes and, well, just about everybody else. The bottom line is that lighter skin still equates with wealth here. Field workers and laborers who tan in the sun tend to be browner than Indonesians of means who loll about inside all day. Indonesia is extremely class-conscious, and in Bali, you can throw caste-awareness on top of that. There must be this same fascination with light skin in Japan, because I see 99% of the Japanese female tourists here wearing god-awful ugly sun hats that look like something my grandfather went fishing in. (Yes, yes, yes, I know it's good to protect oneself from harmful rays of the sun, but have you seen those hats?!)

Needless to say, I don't agree politically or aesthetically with this attitude. To me, the artificially washed-out skin tones shown on Indonesian TV commercials appear somewhat ghoulish. But no one much cares about my opinions here, so I've put away the bronzer and slapped on the SPF 50. Still, my freckles accumulate in the Bali sun despite all precautions. Secretly, I continue to admire them.