Lynn M. Thomas constructs a transnational history of skin lighteners in South Africa and beyond, theorizing skin and skin color as a site for antiracist struggle and lighteners as a technology of visibility that both challenges and entrenches racial and gender hierarchies.

Acknowledgments  ix
A Layered History  1
1. Cosmetic Practices and Colonial Crucibles  22
2. Modern Girls and Racial Respectability  47
3. Local Manufacturing and Color Consciousness  75
4. Beauty Queens and Consumer Capitalism  98
5. Active Ingredients and Growing Criticism  150
6. Black Consciousness and Biomedical Opposition  190
Sedimented Meanings and Compounded Politics  221
Notes  237
Bibliography  293
Index

Lynn M. Thomas is Professor of History at the University of Washington; coeditor of The Modern Girl Around the World: Consumption, Modernity, and Globalization, also published by Duke University Press; and author of Politics of the Womb: Women, Reproduction, and the State in Kenya.