Exactly so, Messy.

Paleness is still a huge status symbol in Japan. Old women cover themselves head to toe, and actually have these nifty glove things mounted onto the handlebars of their bikes so their hands won't even tan as they ride around. Arm socks are high fashion, and lotions actually have whitening agents in them.

Western ideas about tans are slowly starting to catch up here among the young, but for every bottle of sun tan I see at the local drugstore, there's two dozen whitening agents alongside it.

And ideas of thinness, whatever we like to tell ourselves, are a social construct. In America I'm average to slightly chunky. In Japan, I'm a friggin whale. But Japanese people are generally smaller than Caucasians, and so the ideal for "skinny" is even more sckewered towards unhealthy stick.

Fascinating, really.