Skin Lightening Products Advertised by Calling Dark Skinned People 'Losers' (Video)

"Being white makes you a winner. Dark skin makes you a loser." (Screen capture from Thai skin lightening ad)

'Being white makes you a winner': Thai beauty campaign 'showing dark skinned people as losers' is pulled after sparking outrage on social media

The ad Featured Thai actress attributing professional success to pale skin

By Siofra Brennan
A Thai company has pulled an advert for skin-lightening pills following an outcry on social media over a product sold with the tagline 'white makes you a winner'.

The advertisement for Seoul Secret's supplement called Snowz featured a veteran Thai actress Cris Horwang, 35, attributing her professional success to her pale complexion.

'It's not easy to stay at this point for a long time,' she says in the video. 'If I stopped taking care of my body and white complexion, all that I have invested will be gone.'

As she speaks, a smiling, younger woman enters the picture and Cris' own image darkens to charcoal black.

She's seen casting an envious look at the other woman who stands by her side.

'A newcomer will replace me and turn me into a dark star,' she says in the video, using a Thai idiom to refer to her fame fading.

A male voice says, 'You just need to be white to win.'

Whitening creams and pills are wildly popular in Thailand, where pale skin is upheld as the standard of beauty in the media and among many Thais, and is associated with a higher social status.

Advertisements for the products are standard fare on billboards and TV spots, but some companies have faced a backlash in recent years for going too far.

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