It's an interesting contrast when you compare East/Southeast Asia and the West. In the West, after the postwar middle-class boom, having a tan — or just being sunburned lobster red — became a popular way to show you were well-off enough to take time off work and go on a beach holiday. In East and Southeast Asia, and parts of South Asia, fair skin meant you were well-off enough to stay indoors all the time instead of doing farm labor outside like a rural peasant. Now there's an entire beauty industry chemically keeping that thinking alive on both sides.

To be fair, walk into a supermarket in the West and it's full of tanning products!

Good thing more Filipinas are embracing our natural skin color these days

Yeah, my girlfriend swears she doesn't use that stuff, but everything in the CR says 'Whitening' on it.

Skin cancer is going to hit an all-time high in the coming decade.

First time in Asia?

The whole whiteness thing is weird — the creams, and the claims of Spanish ancestry that are a lot like Elizabeth Warren's Cherokee stories. That said, the Philippines isn't alone. Korea does it too, and if you know how to spot it, how common double eyelid surgery is there is honestly disturbing. Look at before-and-after pictures of K-pop women and it's like a different person. Up until the 90s most Korean actresses and singers looked naturally beautiful, but beauty standards are getting weird across Asia — even in Thailand, where darker skin is naturally more common.