Skin Deep

I've been living in Indonesia for six months now. Long enough to have become a bit more accustomed to the way things are done here, to the idiosyncrasies of Indonesian culture that I either didn't know about or had only academic experience of. Long enough to seriously improve my spoken Indonesian, and my confidence in speaking it. Long enough to be outraged when people stare at me, call out to me, or take my picture - with, or without permission. I feel outraged because I've been living here as a student, in student accommodation, making friends with locals, and hanging out in local places. I feel like I have been here long enough to be beyond all that. I don't feel new any more, not even being in a new city. But when I'm outraged, I forget one crucial element that is never going to change, no matter how long I live here: what colour I am.

I've noticed two things this semester (or at least in the last week or so). Firstly, that Indonesia as a nation has very low self esteem. They seem to dislike the way they look here so much that only the most watered down of Indonesian people make it on TV with their ghostly skin, Caucasian/Chinese features and, if not natural, dyed light brown hair. The idea of a beautiful Indonesian is so far from what an actual, ethnic Indonesian person looks like, that if you had only watched Sinetron (soap operas) before you saw an Indonesian in the flesh, you would be shocked. In fact, on the odd occasion some Ibu (older woman) or some group of young boys says that I'm cantik (pretty), usually what they really mean is that I have white skin. There is a roaring trade in skin-whitening products here (ironically, much the same as there is for tanning products in Australia and other Western countries; usually marketed shamelessly by exactly the same companies). But why wouldn't there be? Indonesians are ashamed of their darker skin. They think dark skin means dirty. It means labours under the sun. Dark skin in Indonesia has become a label of poverty, with such ugly connotations that even the meanest labourer will cover skin up completely so as not to tan further. And what better way to make money from a people already insecure about their appearance and recoiling from the appearance of poverty? Sell them something that professes to make them more beautiful and therefore appear more successful...and brainwash them further so they can no longer see the type of beauty they already have, only that which they do not have.

The other thing that I have noticed recently is, perhaps as a result of their own personal obsession with lightening skin colour, that Indonesians simply cannot ignore people who look even slightly different to themselves - and how you look is one of the most influential elements in how you are treated by an Indonesian. In fact, after a few recent conversations, many Indonesians even seem to have an inherent ranking system for ascertaining somebody's worth based upon skin colour.

Caucasians (or Bule) are "good-looking", and generally treated like you would treat an albino or specially coloured animal in the zoo; pointing, photos, excitement, awe, but casual disregard for any feelings that it may have. Just there for your entertainment. For a Bule like me, there is no such thing as incognito.

Arabs are next; not considered quite as luar biasa (extraordinary) as Bule, but definitely the recipients of respect for their superior appearance. My lecturer was telling me today about a cultural nuace amongst Arab families where Arabic females aren't allowed to marry Indonesian males. One large aspect of this reasoning was to keep the race "exclusive" by keeping out the uglier genes from their Indonesian brothers. My lecturer seemed to think this was perfectly sound reasoning. There's that self-esteem problem again.

Next are other South-East Asians who are not Indonesian. Last night I met a girl from Thailand who has come to Malang to study Indonesian in preparation for a possible Masters Degree on some "hot issue" in Indonesian sociology. She was telling me that she'd found Indonesian people to be quite rude so far. People would laugh at her, her slightly different looks, her inability to speak Indonesian yet, and her accent when she tried, as well as talking about her while she was still standing there.

Finally, there are the Papuans who, as my lecturer last semester mentioned numerous times, look different to other Indonesians because of their much darker skin and curly hair, and are subsequently looked down upon.

The worst thing about this silly ranking system is that Indonesians consider themselves so close to the bottom of it! Girls buy coloured contact lenses, dye their hair and spend fortunes on skin-whitening products. Boys dye their hair, cover themselves with long clothing against the sun, and also buy whitening products. When being made up for TV, everyone wears thick make-up to make their skin seem lighter. At the end of the day, it's to their own detriment. No matter how hard you try, shy of Michael Jackson standard effort, you can't change the way you look. But people here just can't see their own beauty; the grass here, so it seems, is always whiter. It's a shame as well that this isn't a simple trend - it's part of the culture. People genuinely think that they are not good-looking enough - and the association between white skin and beauty and success probably dates as far back as Dutch colonialism, and possibly even further to Hindu castes.

It makes me angry that skin colour is still so important to people. It makes me sad that people are deluded into not being able to see their own beauty.

So I guess it's kind of interesting that I'm thinking about skin colour and appearances seeing as (or perhaps because) I'm about to start researching and writing about tattoo culture here in East Java, and they way it's changed over the last 20 years or so. Tattoos are different though; when you mark your body visibly, you're inviting the world at large to observe it and draw assumptions about it. A tattoo is a choice. I'm going to be interviewing people who have chosen to tattoo their skin, and part of that is going to involve how other people perceive and judge them in their society. Your skin colour is because of a complicated mix of genetic inheritance; random chance. To judge someone on something they had no say in whatsoever is shallow. Superficiality at it's highest.

-sigh-

I think perhaps I've reached my threshold of being stared at. I was arguing about this, and racism, and all sorts of things with much more vehemence earlier today, but I'm a bit burned out now. I'm sick of being stared at, and treated like I am not quite human, not quite a person, but something slightly apart from one...but I guess that's just how it is when you live in a different country - it's different.

Thanks for tuning in, kiddies.