@JGoldman10,
White people have everything to do with it, because it is the aesthetic values of white people in personal appearance that have created this perversion of self-image. As it happens, i live in a city with a high concentration of south Asians. South Asians, victims of the Raj, are obsessive about skin color, although there is no evidence that it mattered before the Raj. I know of no east Asians who are obsessed about their skin color.