Many societies thought of white skin being beautiful. If you were to research into this topic, you would see that many of these societies thought of a woman who is of the white-skin descent was someone who was beautiful. To extend on the societies finding these women to be beautiful, you'll more than likely come across the Japanese old folklore about women practicing makeup when the rising sun presented itself in the morning, until night time. Many of these women who practiced these customs were simply performers. They would perform dances, music, or other miscellaneous entertainment methods. Throughout this read I'll further expand on the origination of this trend, and I'll speak of today.
Before I begin, I would like to mention the today's view of skin bleaching; specifically the Japanese. While I do not know much about India and their origination of obsession towards white skin, I will simply speak about the Japanese culture. If someone Redditor is interested in speaking for Indians, I honestly would not mind being informed on their views of their obsession towards white skin. I would assume it would be something similar, but I'm probably wrong. To not stall this read any longer, here I present you what you were wondering /u/kingwithoutakingdom:
Today Japanese women look up to the women who are white skinned. White skin has been a very huge media boom in Japanese ever since the early 1990's. While there is no exact date of where this media boom began, most researchers of this subject can safely assume it happened around the late 1980's or early 1990's. - Many of the Japanese researchers in the late 1980's such as Shiseido Company ^Ltd. (株式会社資生堂) were researching on ways of "bleaching" the skin. I know for a fact that the Shiseido company who is popular for their skin scare products were looking in Arbutin in the late 1980's. While I could elaborate on the numerous amounts of research during this time, that would be a very long response.
Back onto the subject of media boom that happened around the early 1990's, many Japanese women were influenced by the women they saw on the TV. Like most people, we find things attractive. That would be someone personal, or some sort of way people look. The media, who at the time did not know if this was going to be successful, began influencing women to purchase these products to bleach their skin. This would eventually lead into studies to see if these products were healthy and so on. To this day there is a few countries who prohibit the bleaching of the skin simply because of the alleged side effects it has. There is also another reason behind countries prohibiting this sort content as it is taboo. In someone's eyes it may not be taboo, but some other person's eyes it can be. Their reasoning behind it may be completely different from the other person's view.
As I previously mentioned in the part about what the white skin means in Japan today, the desire of being looked up as "beautiful" has dated to around AD 710. Specifically around the Nara period (奈良時代) that started in AD 710 and ended in AD 794. In the Nara period, there was someone who created a white powdery substance referred to today as Oshiroi (白粉). Oshiroi literally translates into "white powder". This white powder would later become a norm in Japan - specifically the 芸者 (Geisha) ladies. This is why a lot of the artwork of Geisha ladies has women depicted as beautiful. To elaborate on the Geisha women, these women would work when the rising sun came up, to the night where they would perform. These performances that these women hosted were all sorts of different forms of entertainment. Some examples of what they would perform were dances, or even musical performances.
When the Heian period (平安時代) started in AD 794, the white facial trend still continued. In fact, it became even more popular than it originally was. Later on sometime around the 11^th century, a Japanese noblewoman by the name of Murasaki Shikibu (紫 式部) would write a tale called The Tale of Genji (源氏物語). This book and many other books before and after its time would create a Japanese saying quoting the beauty of white skinned women. The saying goes by this:
色の白いは七難隠す - White skin covers the seven flaws | This saying means basically a white skinned woman is beautiful with or without attractive features.
Following the saying I mentioned above, this started a very huge fascination towards makeup. Makeup would then regain its popularity around the ending of WWII. We can also assume from the information that I had mentioned above women enjoyed the looks of Geisha girls. That being noted, that is probably how this trend started. Women simply wanted to be idolized as well. Thus, they did anything in their will-power to achieve that certain goal.