When I was in Thailand for a month this year in July, I was socially in a different world. I think my complaint would be the sexpats there, you know old fat white men with girlfriend/wife that looks young enough to be his daughter. Me and my sister would actually talk about it in public, even in front of them or at least near them.. We also would give a bad look towards them, hee. I'm not sure if they understood us or whether they know but they refuse to say anything because we're Westerners too.
My main concern is when I decide to watch television there, the commercials is quite disturbing in my own view. It's the continuous promotion of whitening skin, the people in the ads are milky white and it looks like they never went out during the day to see the sun, whitening cream products (heavily promoted) towards viewers and also to mention in the shops too. It's as if they're saying yellow skin or dark skin is bad and only white skin is beautiful.
I don't understand this modern way structure of the way the media manipulates us wanting us to believe that, but it does psychological affect people in huge numbers. I believe it affects people socially as well. It affects their judgement towards others. Now this is where racism comes into play. The most common rationale that I could think of when it comes to why they do this is that they think that the lighter complexion you have, it will associate with wealth and higher educational levels. Where as people from lower social class, labourers, farmers and etc are exposed to the sun most of the time and have a darker complexion. This is nonsense, a mentality that has plague people for a long time through stereotypes and the media manipulating minorities, it's about time someone should stand up against this marketing stereotype against those who don't have a 'whiter' skin. Anyway, I believe that whatever skin tone we're bone with, we should NEVER embellish it, it makes us in denial over our own race, our own culture and saying a big FUCK YOU towards our ancestors. We should be proud of who we are and how we turned out as.