What are you listening to right now (2025-08)

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"the song was released as the lead single from the album on September 14, 1987, and it reached number one on the US Billboard Hot 100 on December 5, 1987, becoming Carlisle's first, and only, US chart-topper. A month later, it peaked at number one in the United Kingdom, where it held the top spot of the UK Singles Chart for two weeks. In Australia it peaked at number 2. It is considered to be Carlisle's signature song. "


Yeah this song really is not very 80's or at least not very new wave which is what I think of as 80's. New wave does not get to #1 on the Hot 100 in this country. It's pure pop. I always liked Mad About You more, sounded more like the Go-Go's to me.

I must say she looked cuter when she was not only younger but fatter, in Our Lips Are Sealed. At least in the "singing on stage" shots. The fountain and car shots she just looked fatter.

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[Buzz]

best bollywood song imao

it seems that as a dark-skinned Indian woman, you have no chance in Bollywood...

[chuft]

it seems that as a dark-skinned Indian woman, you have no chance in Bollywood...

"In India, over 50% of skin-care product sales are attributed to skin-lightening formulations."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skin_whitening


Skin lightening is a huge thing in a lot of areas of the world and ubiquitous in India. Recall India was invaded in prehistoric times by the Aryans



These light skinned people became the rulers and founded the Mauryan Empire. The 4+1 castes were established to prevent intermarrying and maintain control, and the upper castes, priests and warriors, came from the conquerors. Light skin was thus associated with wealth and power and looking like part of the dominant group. The dark skinned people were either forced into lower castes or pushed south into the less fertile, more mountainous areas of central and southern India and Sri Lanka/Ceylon. Like everywhere, the closer you get to the equator the darker the people are for sun protection so the coloration also was reinforced this way with the northernmost people remaining lighter skinned and the people further south much darker like the Tamils.

Rather a similar effect to the very pale Vikings conquering more southern areas like Normandy (land of the Normans i.e. North-men) and Sicily.


An Indian woman I work with came into my office a few months ago and asked me if her face looked darker. Some of her relatives she had not seen for awhile, told her she looked much darker than before when they saw her recently. She was very concerned about it. I cleared it up when I figured out the blood pressure medication she had started taking in the past few years causes skin darkening.

[Buzz]

"In India, over 50% of skin-care product sales are attributed to skin-lightening formulations."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skin_whitening


Skin lightening is a huge thing in a lot of areas of the world and ubiquitous in India. Recall India was invaded in prehistoric times by the Aryans



These light skinned people became the rulers and founded the Mauryan Empire. The 4+1 castes were established to prevent intermarrying and maintain control, and the upper castes, priests and warriors, came from the conquerors. Light skin was thus associated with wealth and power and looking like part of the dominant group. The dark skinned people were either forced into lower castes or pushed south into the less fertile, more mountainous areas of central and southern India and Sri Lanka/Ceylon. Like everywhere, the closer you get to the equator the darker the people are for sun protection so the coloration also was reinforced this way with the northernmost people remaining lighter skinned and the people further south much darker like the Tamils.

Rather a similar effect to the very pale Vikings conquering more southern areas like Normandy (land of the Normans i.e. North-men) and Sicily.


An Indian woman I work with came into my office a few months ago and asked me if her face looked darker. Some of her relatives she had not seen for awhile, told her she looked much darker than before when they saw her recently. She was very concerned about it. I cleared it up when I figured out the blood pressure medication she had started taking in the past few years causes skin darkening.

that was interesting...thank you...however, I wonder: if Bollywood is mainly consumed by the lower class (at least that's what I assume), why are the majority of the actors light-skinned? If I'm aiming at the dark-skinned underdogs, why do I provoke with rich, light-skinned people?...no one knows...probably for the same reason why, in Columbo, the murderers always come from well-off circles

what a handsome guy at 2:04...the best-looking indian guy I've ever seen

[chuft]

Light skin in India, like in Brazil which also has a big range of shades, is considered more attractive, thus all the sales of the skin lightening products. The women want to look paler because they think it looks more beautiful. It's deeply embedded in the culture now as a result of the lighter skinned people being the rich and powerful for thousands of years. In Brazil it's because the rich powerful rulers were/are traditionally all European colonizers and their descendants with of course lighter skin than the natives or the mixed bloods.

Remember Hinduism says your place in life is deserved based on karma from all your past lives. Those born rich and beautiful into the higher castes deserve it, those dark and poor must have been bad in prior lives, so they should strive to be like their betters if they want to be something better in their next life. It's a great system for maintaining wealth and privilege in a certain group - the ultimate "blame the victim" mentality. The skin tones make it easy to spot what spiritual and social level someone is at. Skin lightening is an attempt to appear higher caste and more beautiful. If you were born an Untouchable you must have done something very bad in your previous life, no sympathy for you.

Showing pretty, light skinned people to a bunch of dark skinned Indian audiences is no different than showing pretty, slender people to a bunch of fat American audiences. People don't want to see themselves, they want to see attractive people. Look at who the wives of rich black American sports or music stars are. They are white. Look at successful black American actresses, like Halle Berry. She clearly has substantial white blood, and is a far cry from say a typical woman in Nigeria. White people dominate America so whiteness is considered attractive.

These ideas of skin tone and beauty can change quickly because of changing associations. It used to be that really pale people were rich and did not have to work outside, while very tan people were poor who worked in the fields. Pale skin used to be the height of beauty in the West. But once most work moved inside and there was no longer an association between "tan" and "poor farm worker" the idea of beauty changed and women began getting tans on purpose to look more beautiful. Tans were no longer associated with field work (poverty) but rather vacations in tropical locations (wealth). People in the winter often go on vacation to a tropical area (if they are wealthy) and come back with a tan, which everyone envies until it fades. Lounging around on the beach to get a tan is a leisure activity you do on vacations. Those who can afford leisure are considered more attractive. Most Americans I know can't afford beach vacations, yes even in Florida because during the prime season, a lot of rich people from colder states and countries fly here to rent all the best places.

Another example is the Ainu minority in Japan. "The Ainu look like Caucasian people, they have white skin, their hair is wavy and thick, their heads are monocephalic (round) and a few have gray or blue eyes. " But the dominant wealthy group in Japan is the Yamato. Guess whose appearance is the standard of beauty in Japan? Not the Ainu's.

Similarly being overweight used to be considered attractive because only rich people could afford that much food and drink. Poor people were thin and often on the brink of starvation. Now, over-weightness (why isn't there a noun for this?) and obesity, caused by cheap fast foods, snacks, and highly processed foods, are associated with poverty, while being normal weight is associated with the more educated and wealthier people, who can both afford more healthy food and also understand the consequences a lot more of eating poorly and excessively. They also can afford to belong to gyms and have personal trainers. As a result, fatness is now unattractive while thinness is attractive.

These changing views of skin tone and body weight inevitably are tied to social status and skin tone/weight act as symbols of wealth.

All of the above are cultural influences on beauty, they happen way too fast to be a result of natural selection (genetics) and thus are not inherent preferences. If they were inherent preferences, sexual selection would have resulted in everyone looking the same in terms of skin tone a long long time ago. But as it turns out, the real fitness test is Vitamin D production. It only took a few thousand years for Africans migrating to Scandinavia to develop very low pigment phenotypes (pale skin, blonde hair, blue eyes) in response to the weak UV light and the need for more absorption of UV wavelengths to produce Vitamin D. That rapid of a change means there was very strong selective pressure in terms of survival and reproduction. It was get pale or be so sickly that you were out competed easily by those who did evolve to make more use of the little available light.

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