Unless one is too young to know or has never come across the history of the late pop music star, Michael Jackson, he was an example of why skin bleaching is not good for anyone.
Born brown skinned, Jackson began using bleaching creams to even his complexion after he was diagnosed with vitiligo. At the time he died, he had become so pale, he often used a cloth facemask when going out, at a time there was no Covid19 and wearing facemasks in public wasn’t the norm.
If that example is too distant, in 1976, the late Afrobeats singer, Fela Anikulapo Kuti, in his track “Yellow Fever” warned against bleaching.
Add this to the people you encounter every day with their skin looking like poorly designed tie and dye materials or badly roasted plantains and you’ll understand the magnitude of the problem.
If you’re a regular visitor to social media platform, Instagram, which Small and Medium Enterprises (SME) use for marketing, you would’ve noticed that food, cosmetics and fashion businesses are among the most popular, with skin bleaching products leading the pack.
Skin bleaching, potentially, has dermatological and health risks caused by the often hazardous chemicals used to make the creams potent.
Statistics by the World Health Organisation (WHO) show that 77 per cent of women in Nigeria (the world’s highest percentage) use skin lightening products.
The practice has even advanced beyond the use of topical creams. People now use pills which they ingest orally, chemical peels, and injections among others.
It is, therefore, understandable, the concerns by Senator Oluremi Tinubu, who moved a motion, calling on the National Assembly to regulate the industry. Following her motion, the Senate, recently, passed a resolution to ensure the regulation of the formulation and distribution of cosmetics, especially bleaching creams and also called on the National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC) to wake up to its responsibility to protect Nigerians against harmful cosmetics.
The action of the Senate has drawn flaks from not a few Nigerians, especially on social media, asking lawmakers to focus on more serious issues.
Skin bleaching is clear and present danger and Nigeria is not the only country exploring legislation to check it. Cote d’Ivoire, Ghana, East African countries, Australia, the United States and Japan all have regulations against skin bleaching products.
While we wait to see what the Senate intends to do, it is important to understand why people bleach their skin.
The reasons are physical, psychological, economic, peer pressure, for acceptance, inferiority complex and wrong role models, among others.
People prefer to be light skinned because it gives them a competitive advantage over brown skinned people and it is the society that made it so.
The chance that a light skinned woman will get the attention of people when she walks into a room is higher than if she was dark. Light skinned people enjoy far higher social capital than dark skinned people.
In this country, a bank was rumoured to only employ light skinned women. You didn’t stand a chance no matter how brilliant and experienced you were if you didn’t have the complexion to go with it.
In a certain north-west state, it is said that your chances of getting a suitor as a maiden are higher if you are light skinned.
Have you ever wondered why the Yoruba refer to a light skinned woman as “Omo pupa”, the Igbo call her “Nwanyiocha”, the Tiv say “Nyian Kwase” and a common saying among the Hausa “Farar mace rabin kyau” in reference to a light skinned lady loosely translates as “the one who is fair has passed the half way mark in beauty,” but do not have any special adulation for brown skin girls?
Today, being light skinned is linked with beauty and success. Check out TV commercials. It doesn’t matter what they are advertising. More often than not, if a woman is the model, she is light skinned. In the movie industry, light skinned actors have a higher chance of getting a role.
While some may argue that what people do with their skin is their business and within their rights, it has become a public health concern with a staggering 77 per cent of women involved.
Be that as it may, regulating the industry alone, through legislation will not solve the problem. Orientations and perceptions need to change and it is only then that we will be seen to be tackling the problem at its root.
The concern raised by the Senate, therefore, opens a window of opportunity for us to begin to have conversations around the issue, conversations focused on changing the orientation around what constitutes beauty and issues of portrayal of light versus dark skinned women in the media, especially in entertainment.
This is the way I see it!
