A Contrastive Study of Colorism on L’Oréal’s Thailand and USA YouTube Channels

The promotion of lighter skin tones—a form of colorism—has a long and worrisome history. However, little is known about the discourse of colorism outside of Western contexts, especially in languages other than English and in online settings. Therefore, in this study, we applied keyword, collocation, and concordance analysis, alongside inductive content analysis to examine 440 thumbnails (images) and their accompanying video titles (2,230 Thai words, 2,001 English words) on L’Oréal’s Thailand and USA YouTube channels. This mixed-method approach allowed us to explore the skincare discourse of each channel and determine to what extent, if any, colorism was present in each dataset. The results from the Thailand dataset showed that white-skinned influencers typically presented the aesthetic benefits of products, where lighter skin was promoted. Results from the USA dataset showed authoritative presenters with a wide diversity in skin tones, who highlighted the functional benefits of products. Based on our findings, we raise awareness of how colorism can be perpetuated in different languages/contexts in subtle ways. Moreover, our results contribute to a growing body of research on multinational companies' complicity in sustaining colorism, and highlight the need for further studies on cross-cultural marketing and colorism in non-Western, non-English-speaking contexts.