The industry of whitening in Lisbon: an ethnography of practices and products for skin bleaching and its risks to dermatological health

Abstract

Through a walking ethnography exercise, we intend to present an ethnography of the cosmetic offer aimed at depigmenting the skin in the heart of Lisbon, focusing on a fragment of the city that brings together different proposals and aesthetic products: Chinese spas, beauty salons and African hairdressers, shops of the so-called “ethnic” trade linked to immigrants and Portuguese descendants of Asian or African populations. We defined this tour as a “whitening path” – ironically paraphrasing the title of one of Michael Jackson’s most famous books, Paths towards a clearing (1989). Considering the body as a project under construction, we intend to show that the imaginary and desires related to the consumption of these treatments, as well as the beauty standards conveyed by the marketing of skin whitening products, reflect and reproduce social variables of gender, class and race. We also want to highlight how most whitening products, sold in the city center, are prohibited by European cosmetics regulation legislation due to the high concentrations of toxic substances. These substances – which circulate freely in the networks of informal commerce – can be very harmful to the consumers’ health, carrying severe dermatological risks