This morning, I went to a Korean skin care store to purchase some blemish balm cream and toner for my skin. The moment I got there, the sales assistant decided to thrust whitening toners at me. “This is good for young people,” she said. I just wanted something to control oil. As for blemish balm cream, everyone who wears it knows that it pretty much only comes in one shade: pale. One of my darker-skinned Asian friends once asked me for blemish balm cream recommendations, and I had to tell her that they are almost always for pale skin, because pale skin is valued in Korea and in most of Asia.

So, coincidentally, I was also forwarded an email from Change.org, the self-declared leading site for social change. Change.org was commenting upon this cover of ELLE India, featuring Aishwarya Rai. The email says:

Elle claims to celebrate women of color by featuring them on magazine covers, but this is the second time in just six months that Elle has blatantly made women of color more white. (The last controversy surrounded Precious actress Gabourey Sidibe.)

Change.org says the cover is racist. Let me first point out that I don’t believe in skin whitening for myself, but I won’t judge you if you carry a parasol under the sun or wear whitening cream at night. In America, I am considered pale. In Asia, shop ladies throw whitening products at me. I know Korean-bred girls who prefer tanned skin and I know Californian-bred girls who prefer pale skin. I don’t necessarily agree with the superficial pressures of being pale in order to be more “attractive” or “marriageable” in Asia — and I am by no means an expert on any of this — but I am tired of people thinking that Asian people want to be pale in order to be more like white people. This is a Eurocentric belief.

Change.org doesn’t point out this is ELLE India and not ELLE US (which published the cover with Gabourey Sidibe). There are completely different mastheads for these two publications, and yet Change.org makes it sound like a giant conspiracy that the “same” magazine lightened the skin of two actresses. Whether you like it or not, it’s common for Indian (and other Asian) fashion magazines to lighten skin. In India (like much of Asia), there is pressure to be pale because pale signifies that you don’t have to be out in the sun all day, working. Asian preferences for pale skin go back thousands of years for a variety of reasons, way before the influx of European and American media and commercial ventures. You can’t attribute everything to colonialism, as tempting as it can be.

Just because some of us want pale skin doesn’t want we want to look more Caucasian.