How TV Commercials Dictate the Definition of Beauty

This video is a TV commercial which promotes a certain brand of soap that claims to whiten skin.  A television advertisement from the Philippines, this particular commercial has irked some viewers, while some people just smiled with its embedded message which tacitly expressed that dark skin is not beautiful.

The video started inside a church where there was a baptismal ceremony proceeding.  As the priest asked the mother to remove the veil from her baby’s face, he was shocked to see that it has a dark skin unlike the mother (in the Philippines, dark skin is commonly not viewed as beautiful, a colonial mentally rooted from Spain’s more than 300 years of rule).

After the video commercial, the brand of the soap was displayed and there is a text message which stated: “Naturally Whitens Skin.”