Making Güeras : Selling white identities on late-night Mexican television
This article examines discourses of whiteness and color in Mexico through a discussion of White Secret, a widely available skin-lightening cosmetic product. In an analysis of a televised infomercial advertising the product, we examine contextualizations of whiteness in Mexico, as figured through the product's representations of light-skinned female bodies and advanced cosmetic technology. We consider the ways that White Secret can speak to broader conceptualizations of whiteness and identity and, furthermore, argue that such an engagement points to the need to interrogate the geographical and epistemological limits of current understandings of whiteness based in Anglo-American and Latin-American contexts.
Document Type: Research Article
Affiliations: 1: Department of Geography, Syracuse University, Syracuse, NY, USA 2: Department of Geography and Regional Development, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, USA 3: Centro de Investigaciones y Estudios Superiores en Antropología Social Unidad Istmo, Oaxaca, México
Publication date: 01 March 2005
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