It’s refreshing to finally be in a place where my height is considered average, for once. Except for the stray Caucasian visitor, of course. But then I realized that everywhere I turned, the advertisements seemed to place me in New York City, not Hong Kong. They feature white models. Of course, I thought at first, all these brands are European. Why would they change their ad campaigns from continent to continent if ad campaigns are such an iconic part of a brand? But then I passed a whitening lotion advertisement, whose model was still white (despite the fact that white people generally don’t want to whiten their skin and these products are nonexistent in the Western world) and then I ran out of excuses.
It was interesting to note that one brand kept their black model.
Also, I almost missed Vogue Nippon in a bookstore because they segregate by culture – Western and Eastern (basically: English and Chinese, Korean, and Japanese). I just looked in the fashion magazine part of the bookstore – too bad I gravitated towards the English side of the store first. Silly me.
3 Comments
July 9, 2008 at 10:47 pm
Odd. Could it possibly be that the Western ideal of beauty has infiltrated Hong Kong?
Forty-eight hours of travel? Did you have delays or something?
July 12, 2008 at 12:00 am
Haha, epicanthal fold surgery much?
I had long waits in between flights. They were all tickets bought from frequent flyer miles, so I ended up with 5 hours in Chicago, 7 hours in L.A., and 12 hours in Hong Kong plus the plane rides themselves.
December 5, 2008 at 5:45 pm
[...] – bookmarked by 6 members originally found by Tieno on 2008-10-29 at the Hong Kong airport (my total travel time is just shy of 48 … [...]