To Bleach Or Not To Bleach: Running Away From The Skin

“Who taught you to hate the color of your skin? Who taught you to hate the texture of your hair? Who taught you to hate the shape of your nose and the shape of your lips? Who taught you to hate yourself from the top of your head to the soles of your feet?” Malcolm X

In this day and age of the internet and the free flow of information, many consumers have fallen victim to societal pressures. This comes at a time where trends determine whether you fit in or not and without a sense of self-control we may fall victim to the dangers of the negative impacts of the internet.

Big world corporations have mastered consumer behavior and have gone ahead to capitalize on our insecurities, not only do they constantly point out and remind us of how flawed we are but also milk us dry by bombarding us with advertisements from one product after the other to ‘fix’ those flaws. This has been made possible by Eurocentric Standards of beauty.

Among those notorious culprits is the Beauty and Cosmetics Industry. Women of all walks of life particularly those of color have been mostly targeted across the globe. Over centuries, colored skin has time and again been preached to be unattractive and unpleasant to the eye hence the need to get ‘rid’ of. This twisted notion has been deeply engraved from Africa to Asia and other parts of the world where there are people of color. This has seen a rise in bleaching and skin lighting cases.

“Unregulated clinics offering backstreet skin-bleaching injections have become increasingly popular with Kenyan women – a trend that health professionals find alarming. Many of the products injected into River Road clients come from unregulated and imported materials from countries such as the Democratic Republic of Congo and China. Some list dangerous chemicals among their ingredients, including alpha hydroxyl acids (AHAs), a type of corrosive compound used in chemical peels”,  an Aljazeera report on the bleaching menace in Kenya read.

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One Dr. Adam Friedmann, a dermatologist at London’s Harley Street Dermatology Clinic, agrees that the increasing popularity of the injections is a worrying trend. “With bleaching creams from places like China and Africa, there is no quality control. Bleaching creams contain dozens of chemicals, most of which are not labeled. Unregulated creams could – and often do – contain powerful steroids. They can cause thinning and skin damage,” he remarks.

In India, darker-skinned Indians, especially women, face discrimination at work, at school, and even in love. Some arranged marriage websites let families filter out prospective brides by skin tone. So it may be no wonder that about half of all skincare products in India, lighteners designed to “brighten” or “lift” essentially to whiten a user’s skin color according to the World Health Organization.

WHO estimates that such products amount to about a $500 million industry in India alone. Until recently, some of them even came with shade cards like paint swatches making it easier for users to track the lightening of their skin. Some products claim to “lighten” the skin using multivitamins such as vitamin B3, and many users have said they’re happy with the results. Other products may contain mercury or bleach, which WHO cautions can damage skin cells. Other skin-lightening treatments, including intravenous and pill formulas, which studies have linked to liver and kidney damage.

It is time we changed that notion and understood and accepted that real skin has folds, wrinkles, pores, scars, and marks, comes in different shades and tones, and has acne. Real skin is nothing close to perfection and that perfect skin is not necessarily healthy skin. We should also not ‘kill’ ourselves in pursuit of attaining these unachievable set standards. Not only do they drain our finances but also rob us of the joys of life’s simple pleasures.