[Beauty Mark]

Well, for whatever the reasons, Asia in general celebrates pale skin. A friend when to the Philippines with her boyfriend, and the family thought she was so gorgeous because she has fair white skin. Another friend whose very tan for being East Asian (it's natural; in the dead of Northeast winter, she has a tan) isn't as beautiful in the eyes of her family because she has a year long tan. An Indian friend of mine is adamant about being darker (she's very fair; she's maybe a shade or two darker than my East Asian skin) because of this cultural notion. She sees it more as wanting to be more like "Western" culture, because when she visits her family in India, they wear "Western" clothes and are more interested in US/Europe culture than their own; I don't know if they do this to accommodate my friend or it's how it always is.

There are a lot of reasons why light skin is desired. De-colonization is pretty recent for some of these countries, and I can imagine that being white is equivalent to power (which is better) to some of these people (racism). Some of these people can terribly old-fashioned and think being pale means you don't have to work in the hot fields like the tanned people (classism). Or it could be simply people wanting the exotic. A lot of trends in beauty aren't something most people can achieve, like when being thin with big breasts was trendy; I know there are quite few people who do have that natural body, but there are many, many more who do not.

I think more research has to be done on it. However, it's really silly that one skin tone is touted over another.