Skin "Care"

你们好 (Ni Hao)
While killing time in a shopping plaza, waiting to meet up with a friend, I took a stroll down the skin care isle. Having only bought one tube of face cleanser in China, I had never closely observed the selection. China has many choices in skin care products, with one catch...most of them contain "whitening solution". This is a common solution used in various countries all over the world, particularly Africa, and parts of Asia, and It churns the age-old question concerning " What is Idyllic Beauty?".
This whitening solution is, essentially, a bleach...a concentrated acid solution, applied to skin to...lighten it. After a few applications, your skin peels, and the new layer reveals evidence of a lighter, bleached tone. These products are heavily regulated in the USA by the FDA, but not for their controversial use. The FDA regulates the main ingredient, Hydroquinone because if overuse occurs, scaring, as well as loss of elasticity is more inevitable than not, as well as it possibly being a dangerous carcinogen. So, I was upset when I saw US brands offering these solutions. Here is a "whitening kit" from Olay...and a Loreal product called "White Perfect Deep Whitening".
Although these companies can not sell most of these products in the US, they still make a killing here in China. You have to search long, and hard to find facial products that don't have a bleaching solution in them.
What frustrates me more, is that it is so accepted! The question I raise is...Is it alright to change you skin color for "aesthetic" reasons? Many cultures change their appearance for aesthetic reasons, weather it be tattoos, piercings, scaring...you name it, but this seems to be a cross-cultural practice. I don't think you can even say it is a "cultural" thing, when it spans so many diverse groups of people.The people who use these solutions are easy to identify because they often neglect their hands, neck, or other features, and thus, have quite different skin tones in those areas. The process must be continued in order to keep the true color from returning. As I write this, I wonder if I even have the right to criticize, as I love to tan in the summer sun. Thinking my skin looks better if it's more tan. For some reason tho, that seems a lot more natural to me than this bleaching acid... I know I even criticize people who use tanning beds, instead of the sun.
When I first moved to China, my host sister and I went for a stroll around her community. She, like many Chinese women, carried a dainty parasol to shade her skin. She said, "Oh, I don't know why Americans want to be so tan! We don't want that! We want to be more White." I was astonished, and taken aback by her comment. Aesthetics perplexes me, and this obsession with beauty=lighter skin=a better life=....the list continues... perhaps people will say that my judgment is irrelevant because it is "outside" the realm of knowledge for this case. I am a marginalized knower in the epistemology of skin bleaching, as I am just a young, white female.
I just don't agree with the companies that exploit the use of such a damaging skin "care" regime.