New trends in China?

Throughout most of Asia, the paler the skin, the better, which is why I was rather surprised to see that the Chinese cheerleaders for the Olympic beach volleyball team all have rather dark tans.

However, it's not necessarily true that the Chinese want white skin, as in European "white skin." The Chinese and most Asian people believe that beautiful women should have skin like that of a full moon.

Of course that's not to say that Asia is not influenced by western culture, it's a common sight in China's modern cities to see Asian girls with permed hair, often dyed a warmer shade of black or lighter brown or even with streaks of red, (as you can see on many of the cheerleaders as well.) The main difference being, Chinese seem to have a phobia of the sun. On the beaches of Hainan island, the Hawaii of China, during mid-day when the sun is at its most damaging, the beach is vacant of any Chinese tourists. Most Chinese women carry a parasol on sunny days, or wear a hat.

The first thing I thought of when I saw these Chinese cheerleaders was the Japanese fashion style "ganguro" which is basically a very western influenced style taken up by Japanese girls (and sometimes guys) that try to look like a weird mix of California girl/Barbie/just plain weird, with super dark tans, bleached blond hair and often white makeup.

Here is an example of "ganguro" fashion, however these kids have rather drab clothing compared to most ganguro. To my knowledge this style is not popular in China... yet.

Sort of the Yin and Yang of fashion, you always get both sides. Ganguro would definitely be the "Yang".

Whereas, on the other end of the spectrum or on the "Yin" side of Asian fashion, is the pale-skinned, dark-haired (often with brightly colored section of red, purple or blue, you name it), choppy seemingly random hair cuts and dark, punk/gothic fashion, based manly on the gothic punkish music called "visual kei." As you can probably guess from the name, this is very focused on appearance.

This style is slowly making its way into the high schools of the U.S.A by the name of "scene kid" which is just the Americanized version of the visual kei street fashion in Asia. The main difference being that the colors are brighter and less gothic.

Being a figure painter I know though painting from life that skin really does look more "alive" and has much more color when not overly tanned. A little sun is good for you but too much is definitely bad. Hopefully, Asia does not pick up more of western culture's unhealthy habits.

I just hope that all this does not signal a new Chinese trend of slowly baking and thus killing your skin (and hair) like we have popularized in the west.

Interested in more Chinese cheerleader photos? This is where I found mine: [click]