20 July 2009

Q&A with Nina Jablonski: Society and skin

Before her TEDTalk went up on Friday, anthropologist and skin expert Nina Jablonski took some time out of writing her new book to talk to the the TEDBlog. Nina had a lot to say about how our skin affects how we are perceived, sometimes in ways we want it to and sometimes in much more pernicious ways.

Are you excited that your TEDTalk is being posted?

I’m very excited, very happy. I greatly enjoyed being at TED and the atmosphere of the gathering. Also, I think the spread of TEDTalks via the Internet is even more important than being there. It’s all over the world. I know people all over the world who watch TEDTalks. It’s important to get these ideas out to more and more people. One can never predict where one’s idea might go.

So, of all the things you could study, why skin?

It started as an accident more than 15 years ago. I was asked by a colleague to give a lecture in his class, on skin. This lecture was being give to an introductory class of human biology. I read up on the relevant materials, but then realized that I also wanted to tell the students about the evolution of skin. As I started looking for information, I discovered that the research on that topic was scarce. My interest was piqued by this deficiency of information on the evolution of our largest organ.
Then, I went to a seminar where I saw a lecture by a colleague on skin that gave me incredible insight. The insight was sufficiently important that I decided it was time to run with it, despite my lack of experience in this research area. The next step was that I wrote a paper to propose my new hypothesis. That was 17 years ago, in 1992. I just put it out there, and I thought if anything ever arises, at least I’ve written it. In the meantime, I kept my antennae twitching for new research.

Then, in 1995 to ’96, new data on UV radiation at the Earth’s surface was released from NASA. This allowed me to investigate my hypothesis rigorously. With my husband’s help, he’s a geographer and statistician, that’s when the project really started. We began developing data on why UV levels and skin color correlated. Then, in 2003, the University of California press said, “You really should write a book on skin in general.” So, I said, “OK.” One thing led to another. It was the prompting of my editor that got me to think about including the evolution of skin, not just skin and the sun. It’s a very broad topic.

Speaking of which, in your book you talk about skin decoration and how humans are unique in decorating our skin by tattoos, make-up and more. What do you think this means?

We do have an awareness of ourselves that allows us to engage in willful decoration that other animals do not engage in. These dramatically change our appearance and how we are perceived. You can put on a particular set of clothes and make-up or body paint and have a completely different perception.

We can make ourselves appear more sexually appealing to members of a particular group, or more threatening. At football games, people wear all sorts of face paint because they want to look fierce and war-like. These are very specific visual signals that are meant to get particular responses. These things have real evolutionary value. There’s an advantage to being good at putting on make-up and sending the correct signal. You don’t have to look very far. Open up any women’s magazine and you’ll see tips on applying make-up. But all those tips are geared to creating a particular appearance that we know from evolutionary biology makes one appear more sexually attractive.

All the ways of decorating skin make statements that impact how people treat you. Knowing how to decorate can even make one more successful at attracting certain groups of friends.

One of the most obvious factors in our skin’s appearance is its color, and you talk about the origins of color in your talk. But, what about how skin color has historically affected our behavior towards each other?

Skin color is the story of pigment in the skin, having been determined by UV radiation. If your ancestors were closer to the equator, you are dark and if further away, you are lighter. The biology is very straightforward. But, history is much more complicated and hard to comprehend.

People have placed values in skin color based on who interacted with who. The most insidious of these interactions is the Trans-Atlantic slave trade in the 1500s. A lightly-pigmented people in a position of power and mobility went by ship to a different part of the world where they found a darkly-pigmented people. As we know, they created slaves of these people on the African continent, in the equatorial area. Many of the problems with color we face today came to be because of interactions started by the slave trade.

The easiest way to establish the dominance needed for the system of slavery to function is to establish visual mechanisms, which in this case was the color of these slaves. What you then see is the literary development of black as bad, negative, as mentally and spiritually inefficient. This is the toxin that created created much of the race debate.

People are color-coded in very visible ways. We are very visually-oriented as primates and color makes a big difference to us. We notice subtle differences in color and these can be perceived as social value if given the right narrative. These values exist in India, Japan, China and elsewhere. In most places where you find a gradation of color, you get this phenomenon of colorism. There’s a general prejudice against darkly pigmented skin and a bias toward lightly pigmented skin.

Even within African-American, Caribbean and Latin American communities you can find this prejudice and it’s a derivative of the slave trade. Light brown versus dark brown. And it can be very subtle, this color difference, but it’s just enough for us to distinguish. And this really concerns me, because -- what happens to that dark-colored child? They feel that they have limited prospects or possibilities. This to me is the most poisonous aspect. This is one of the most injurious things we can do to a child. Stopping this is part of my life’s work now. I’ll tell you more about that a little later on.

READ MORE: Nina discusses how our skin color will change in the future, her new book and how she takes care of her skin.

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17 July 2009

Breaking the illusion of skin color: Nina Jablonski on TED.com

Nina Jablonski says that differing skin colors are simply our bodies' adaptation to varied climates and levels of UV exposure. Charles Darwin disagreed with this theory, but she explains, that's because he did not have access to NASA. (Recorded at TED2009, February 2009 in Long Beach, CA. Duration: 14:32)

Twitter URL: http://on.ted.com/1h

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05 February 2009

Audience questions for Nina Jablonski

Nina Jablonski talked to us about skin. One thing we learned is that those with lots of melanin have to recognize that they have a lot of natural sun screen in their skin, which slows the process of making Vitamin D.

I had the opportunity to ask Nina some of the questions emailed in (to jane@ted.com) by audience members.

Carter Burwell, Long Beach
Q: As humans in Northern latitudes lost melanin to adapt to lower UVB, did they evolve better DNA repair mechanisms to deal with UVA?
Nina: No they didn't, and this is a real problem in the causation of skin cancer.

Kyra Gaunt, Long Beach
Q: Do you think that climate change will or is affecting people with lots of melanin adversely?
Nina: No, climate change is the least of the problem in terms of skin. Much more serious is the problem that people with moderately to darkly pigmented skin are more at risk of vitamin D deficiency when they stay inside a lot, or wear concealing clothing. This is also a problem for people in general with indoor lifestyles and who wear a lot of sun screen. The important thing is to make sure you get vitamin D one way or another and the safest way is through your diet.

Christine Sciulli, Long Beach
Q: Is eating Vitamin D as good as synthesizing it from the sun?
Nina: Yes it is, provided that you eat a source of food or a supplement that contains Vitamin D3, which your body can easily convert into the active physiologically important form. Good foods include vitamin D enriched milk, oily fish, and vitamin D supplements.

Photo: Nina Jablonski at TED2009, Session 5: Understand, Feb. 5, 2009, Long Beach, CA Photo: TED / Asa Mathat

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05 February 2009

TED2009 minutes from Erik Hersman: Nina Jablonski on evolution and skin color

Erik Hersman is livebloggingTED2009 allowing Ethan Zuckerman to accept an award in Denver, with no interruption in coverage. The following is a taste of his reporting on anthropologist Nina Jablonski:

"She dives into the life of Darwin. Specifically, she is talking about human skin pigmentation. Darwin rejected the idea that skin color was determined by the sun, the environment. Nina states: 'if only he lived today, If only Darwin had NASA.' "

Erik goes on to discuss Nina's groundbreaking work on why we are the colors we are, and how that interacts with globalization in ways you probably haven't even considered.

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