The whiteness of my legs has given my friends and 
family something to laugh about for as long as I can remember. Whenever they came out they would put their legs next to them to compare the colour and laugh at my milky white skin. As a child I used to put sun tan oil on my legs during our holidays in Spain or France and lie in the sun trying to turn them brown. But whatever I did they remained stubbornly white.
I would never have guessed, lying on that beach in Majorca in the 1970’s covered with frying oil, that years later people would look at my white legs with envy. As I sat melting in the heat of the sitting room in my shorts this week, my legs were on show to my Chinese family for the first time. As usual, eyes turned to my legs and they quickly became the subject of the conversation.
– How white your legs are
– Yes, they have always been white
– I wish my legs were white like yours
– Really, people have always laughed at my white legs?
– Everyone in China wants to be white. To be brown makes you look like a farmer, like you do manual labour. White skin is much more beautiful.
The skin whitening business is worth in the region of $100 million in China alone and growing. Everywhere in Nanjing I see posters, billboards, leaflets, demo stands, TV ads for skin whitening products. It is obvious even to my untrained eye that a lot of these images have had the Photoshop treatment. Do people really think that it’s a good idea to bleach your skin?
I suppose it’s no different to a Westerner going on the sun bed or exposing themselves to dangerous rays by lying on a beach in the sun. I did, after all try to fry mine a different colour when I was younger! But, as one of them pointed out to me, we white people have a choice; we can do nothing and remain white or get a tan – well most of us anyway!
So I have become accidentally and unwittingly fashionable in China. A note to any others facing ridicule over the whiteness of their skin, come to China – it’s all the vogue here.
family something to laugh about for as long as I can remember. Whenever they came out they would put their legs next to them to compare the colour and laugh at my milky white skin. As a child I used to put sun tan oil on my legs during our holidays in Spain or France and lie in the sun trying to turn them brown. But whatever I did they remained stubbornly white.
Yes your legs are almost transparent.