Who's the fairest of them all? Television ads for skin-whitening cosmetics in Hong Kong

This paper explores the notion of fair skin and its relationship to the construction of a Hong Kong ‘racial’ identity by Hong Kongers. It examines a local television advertisement for a cosmetic product named ‘UVWhite whitening softener’. Based on the interpretations of focus-group participants in Hong Kong and the UK, and his own in the role of analyst, the author explores three different perspectives on the advertisement. A triangulation of these three perspectives reveals a number of possible meanings and symbolic functions of fair skin in forming identities of ‘self’ and ‘other’, and their relationships with class, gender and, above all, race in various sociocultural contexts. These perspectives, and the differences between them, also closely reflect the sociocultural backgrounds of the participants and provide clues to an understanding of the ways in which skin colour operates as a visual agent in defining the boundaries of cultural identity, and in identifying a person's place in a local social hierarchy, if not an increasingly global one.