>>9424555There's an element to this that isn't simply
>white people envythere's historical basis for pale skin in general, not that specific hue of pinkish white that is the hallmark of native europeans.
If you look at ancient (as in, pre-european contact/imperialism-colonialism era) china, arabia and a few other locales the standard of beauty for women was always paler than for the men. Not necessarily "white" as in euro-descent, but "white" as in not sun-weathered and dirty looking.
A labourer peasant serf woman burned by the sun and beaten by the element wasn't exactly anyone's ideal, but a paler, "fresher looking" princess-like specimen was.
It just so happens that europeans had a natural advantage in this regard in that they were by default paler than all the rest in the first place.
Of course now with the it perhaps becomes murkier with the ascendancy of western culture and beauty ideals but if you go to china and japan the adverts have their own standard of beauty: dark black hair, pale skin that hasn't been aged by the sun. Such as it was before they even saw a european woman.
You notice it in anime in that the male characters can sometimes be slightly tanner than the females, who are on the whole generally paler, and some anime even get the difference in hues right between characters that are expressly meant to be Japanese and those that are meant to be westerners.
Off the top of my head: asobi asobase, the difference is "white" (more like paleness) between the white girl and the two nips and also in older episodes of detective conan when an american character happened to be on screen.
wtf was I rambling on about again?
