For ages, mostly black women have had the need to bleach their skin white. We must not hurry to condemn, but rather understand the situation and what it is that has fuelled or sustained this dangerous need.
Perhaps the pangs of colonialism, where the white man dragged us in chains, selected African women as sex slaves, and made them feel they are good for nothing is still with us, such that we have a deep seated unconscious inclination to be, or closely associated with Caucasian looks in order to feel self worth and the beauty God has given us.
Bleaching fever in recent times has caught many men too, with notable people like the Jamaican musician Vybz Kartel openly campaigning for skin bleaching, comparing it to women wearing wigs and said girls loved his white bleached out face. He currently is serving a 35 year jail term for murder, I am sure by the time he comes out he’d have bleached the hooliganism out of his prison mates.
I think some education is relevant here. Bleaching is the use of creams, lotions, or pills to whiten or lighten skin. The dark colour of the skin is caused by a pigment called melanin. Very dark people have more melanin, fair coloured people have less melanin and albinos have little or no melanin at all. The lesser the amount of melanin you have the more wicked the sun is to you. That’s why Caucasians suffer sun burns when they come to Africa or over enjoy at the beach in summer, but as for us, the sun is our friend. The absence of melanin makes the sun particularly cruel to the eyes of albinos. So next time you see a person with albinism wearing dark glasses in the afternoon or struggling to identify you, remember it’s not funny. The amount of melanin is mostly determined by heredity and race.
Bleaching creams make you oyibo by stopping the work of melanin, reducing melanin or attacking the cells that produce melanin! Two main chemicals found in bleaching creams are mercury and hydorquinones. Mercury is associated with causing mercury poisoning that can lead to confusion, irritability, tremors, memory loss, fatigue and kidney failure leading to death. Hydorquinones on the other hand increase the risk of skin cancers, make you age faster, weaken the skin, cause delayed wound healing , poor skin tone and in some cases weak bones or osteoporosis, small thing norr kp3, your bone is broken.
Long term bleaching can lead to the pancake or roasted plantain appearance, where your body is spotted like a leopard. There will be blue-black thick areas around the cheeks, back of fingers and dependent extremities such as the knees and elbows. This is called exogenous ocronosis. Forget the big English, your body will do patch patch, very unsightly.
Steroid acne is another effect of long term bleaching…this almost untreatable version of acne usually appears on the chest, back or arms and refuses to go away. Of course with the massive reduction in melanin comes the exposure to the sun’s rays, the discomfort of hot days, and the possibility of bad outcomes from surgery because of delayed wound healing.
Vaginal bleaching or vulva lightening has even become more common of late, perhaps because of the need to wear skimpier bikinis in people whose genital area is darker as a result of the hormonal changes of puberty. Doing so exposes a woman to all the risks of bleaching including mercury contamination of vaginal mucosa, blisters, burning, itching and ulcers around the vagina.
Why then do we put ourselves through all these and even risk dying just so we can appear fair? Can’t we appreciate the beauty of our natural skin? Maybe we should re-engineer our thinking and understand that black is beautiful, and that the fair coloured palm kernel seed is not sweeter than the black one.
Yours truly,
James Mawuli Gawu.