...fair skin means work: women pull on gloves to ward off the sun before hopping onto their scooters, they refuse to go swimming before the sun is down, and they buy and use one or more of the hundreds of whitening creams and body lotions sold in stores or beauty clinics. Cosmetics companies such as Unilever and L’Oréal have huge Asian markets for skin-lightening creams, and market researchers predict that the demand in Indonesia for skin-whitening products will only grow in the coming years. Considering the importance of perceived ideals of skin color and the ways in which Indonesians identify and judge other Indonesians by physical features (such as slanting eyes, nose shape, and hair form), it is surprising that there is not a larger body of studies on race in Indonesia. Thanks to Ann Stoler and to those reacting to and reflecting on her work, we know how difficult it is to pin down the importance of race in relation to other indicators of difference—such as class, religion, or language—and how important it is to do that anyway.1 Scholars of postcolonial Indonesia have paid less attention to race, partly, perhaps, because of Suharto’s SARA policy, a ban on the public discussion of issues related to ethnic groups, religion, race, and other group-based interests, because they were considered a danger to public order.2 Only in studies of the position of people of Chinese descent in Indonesia and in critical studies of Papua has race been a concept of some interest. Saraswati shows how “whiteness” is now a desirable commodity without a determinate geographical boundary, and models of different mixed-race backgrounds and Asian countries appear on the pages of Cosmopolitan, the Indonesian version of the U.S. magazine that is central to this chapter.4 Like the original publication, the magazine in Indonesia sells messages of happiness and freedom combined with ideals of femininity and whiteness.