Is there such a thing as skin bleaching? In other words, are there soaps or creams that can change a black person’s skin several shades lighter?
I know folks slam Michael Jackson for that, but I believe that man had Vitiligo, so we will go with some other examples.
Sammy Sosa and a favorite dance hall artist of mine, Vybz Kartel. They both appeared all of a sudden looking many shades lighter.
I can’t remember if Sammy copped to bleaching, but Vybz has. He even mentions it in his music. (his newer stuff, which is rapidly becoming crap. His older stuff is some of the greatest dancehall reggae ever, IMO).
The thing is, I didn’t believe there was such a thing as a soap that can cause such tremendous change! Anyone know what’s up with this?
There’s an old dancehall reggae song (Dem A Bleach by Nardo Ranks) that speaks out against it, so I’m guessing that skn bleaching has been going on for quite some…
Dem ah bleach
Fe look like ah white ting
Gwan brown girl
Cause ah you run de place
Look how you nice
With you beautiful face
Ah true say you brown that is no disgrace
So tell dem girl
That ah you win de race
Gyal me honour you
She you na bleach out you skin
You na use no chemical
Fe look like white ting
Brown ah de color
Ah de Indian skin
Why some girl dem ah white up dem skin
Skin whiteners generally work in one of two ways, and are often combined. There’s a treatment to inhibit the production of melanin (generally by interfering with an enzyme called tyrosinase) and then there’s exfoliation - acid, mechanical or laser treatments which slough off skin cells.
Some common skin whiteners are carcinogenic (cause cancer), others produce chemical burns or abrasions from the exfoliants. Many are poorly regulated in their manufacturing and labeling. So it’s a good idea, if you want to lighten some or all of your skin, to have a consultation with an actual dermatologist and use products recommended by her, not off the shelf or homemade concoctions. (And yes, this is me the claim-your-own-body hippie herbalist speaking, so…yeah, I think it’s *really *important to not mess with this stuff yourself!)
Jacknifed, I know and love that song (and all the other songs on that riddim, including Murder She Wrote) but I still am not certain that bleaching really works.
ETA: Err, WhyNot, I appreciate your advice but I sincerly hope you don’t think I would consider bleaching my awesome black skin!
Oh, I doubted it, but figured I should add something of the warnings for lurkers. Consider the “you” to be rhetorical!
As to whether or not it works - it can, but the results tend to be slow and patchy, even with the prescription stuff. When you see stars show up with lighter skin, it’s usually from heavily pigmented makeup, either over their still-dark skin or their splotchy-in-the-process-of-whitening skin. And lots of the whitening cremes sold OTC or recipes passed down from Gramma don’t work at all.
WhyNot’s warning is important not only because of the homemade stuff, but also of the poorly regulated off-the-shelf stuff.
From what I’ve read, skin whitening products are very very common and popular both in many African countries - where being lighter is helpful (colonial history putting different ethnic groups in different positions*; the influence of western media putting white folks as being superior)- and in Asia, e.g. China and Japan, where traditionally, fair skin is considered attractive.
Human rights and development organisations decry this not only for reasons of “Black is beautiful” self-esteem, but also because of the very real, dangerous side-effects to health, that most users of the products (young women in Asia, young people in Africa) don’t know about (the products don’t come with a standard disclaimer like in western countries).
There’s a column from Cecil regarding intermixing in Brazil (the question was whether humans would all be one day one uniform skin colour because of intermarriage), and he told of how there’s a very strong trend towards “lighter” shades being more prestigious - even in a country as strongly mixed as Brazil.
I understand it’s also important in the Indian subcontinent: in Glasgow I saw several stores catering to people with Indian and Pakistani backgrounds touting those products. I noticed them because I’d heard the trend mentioned in novels from Indian writers.
Anecdotally speaking, as a super-pale white woman, I’ve used an OTC 2% hydroquinone cream to reduce light brown pigmented areas near my mouth, and over time it did the trick. The stuff is mildly irritating, even at that low concentration and only used a few times a week, so I can’t even imagine how much worse it’d be to go from minor spot-treating some light spots on a temporary basis to trying to lighten all of your skin. I’m sure those treatments are at least once a day and probably higher concentrations.
In China I would regularly use baby skin products because those were the few products that I could count on not to include lighteners. It’s absolutely routine there, and for young women especially it can be a bit of an obsession. What I see as a sea of Chinese faces, my students saw as a carefully ranked hierarchy of skin tones, and they had a whole vocabulary for describing the most subtle variations.
I can’t imagine the shitstorm if someone white came around and said, conversely, about tanning salons : “I sincerely hope you don’t think I would consider darkening my awesome white skin!”.
I thought maybe they had some kind of process done, that only rich can afford. I thought this, because I have only ever seen celebs get the job done. I never met an every day black person go from dark to light; I had guessed that if creams could do that, then I would see it more in everyday people.
I didn’t think it was an urban legend that hydroquinone works. I didn’t even know what hydroquinone is.
I asked because Vybz happens to be one of my favorite artists. His music was very pro-black and militant, and he championed the black ghettos and loved and taught the black babies. I find it fascinating that he appears to be struggling with self-hate issues. His new songs tout a new soap that he is selling that promises to lighten the skin. These are the things that has brought the questions to my mind and caused me to ask.
To be honest, your post seems a bit snide in tone. I don’t know if I’m misreading that, but if I’m not, you can color me baffled at the snidism.
ETA: Khaki, I actually have heard white women express love for their porcelain skin and brag that they would never tan. Or at least it seems that I have heard that. But, yeah, my skin isn’t really awesome; it’s 36 years old. I was kinda joking while still trying to assure WhyNot that I wouldn’t dare lighten my skin or even want to.
Well, as for Sammy Sosa at the time he was taken looking so, well, pale he claimed it was a skin cream treatment he was using at the time that did it. He claimed that plus the lights from the cameras made him appear paler than he was.
Later it was claimed by a member of the Cubs staff that he was having ‘skin rejuvenation’ done, possibly a laser treatment after spending so much time in the sun playing baseball.
But he definitely got paler there to SOME extent, for whatever cause.
No word on why he wore the green contacts, though.
Nzinga, yeah, I’ve seen “pro-porcelain” comments, probably mostly as anti-tanning backlash. I’ve probably made a few myself; being very highly predisposed toasted skin cancer, I am pretty much Not Allowed to tan even a little bit.
Hydroquinone is only sold OTC as a 2% solution in the US, but I wouldn’t be surprised if you could get some more concentrated version through a doctor’s office if you really wanted to do some hardcore lightening. And who knows what else some places might use, too.
Actually, I think sentiments of that sort do come up without uproar. I am white, and I don’t tan, either in salons or in the sun. Mostly because it’s stupid and dangerous, but after so many years, also because pale is okay with me. I wouldn’t call my skin “awesome”, mostly because I do have lots and lots and lots of moles - brown skin can be beautiful, pale skin can be beautiful, but looking like a reverse Dalmatian, not so much - but I do like *my *pale, white skin. Nzinga’s perfectly allowed to like her own black skin and not have it made in to a racial debate.
But yeah, mostly…Lighten up, Francis. **Nzinga **and I know each other pretty well, and it was a lighthearted comment and taken as such.
Nzinga, I don’t know anything about Sosa in particular, but I have heard black people complain that the lighting used at photo shoots isn’t very well suited for dark skin. Well, I heard that more 10 years or so ago, I think they’re getting better. But apparently the lights that make white people look good don’t work so well with dark skin. So if you’ve got a photographer with only one set up and two people with dissimilar skin tones, someone’s going to end up not looking like themselves. And then, of course, there’s the issue of digital editing done by people in post production who may never have even met the subject in person, so they may “correct” the color to something that bears no relation to reality, simply because it makes the picture look good.
Also, remember that vitiligo is more common in black people (although it does happen in all races). It’s horrid and disfiguring, and honestly, I can see why some people would claim to use soap or lightening creme or “skin rejuvenation treatments”, rather than admit to a medical condition which carries a stigma. Better to be seen as active and strong and *choosing *the change to your appearance than a victim or a diseased person, y’know? Seems like that’s what happened in Michael Jackson’s case - he had vitiligo and that’s why his skin started to lighten. He may have used lightening medication to try to even out the skin tone, and maybe even to lighten it further, but it seems doctors agree now that he actually had vitiligo before the chemical lightening began.
Chemical tans do tend to cause derision, though, at least among people who don’t make a living onscreen. I remember remarks along the lines of “what did she do, get painted at a garage?”
There was a Fantastic Four issue waaaay back when, where a photographer had managed to catch She-Hulk sunbathing - she can’t stop the photos being published but… yeah, someone in post production thought the pics were colored all wrong and corrected them. With no size reference, the pics became just a white, brown-haired chick mighty pissed at being photographed while sunbathing on top of her home.
They change breast size, “correct” the shape of arms, take out laugh lines, plump mouths, add eyelashes, pluck eyebrows; a common mistake in makeup is white people whose faces have been made up but not their (amazingly pale by contrast) hands. If I found out that makeup artists routinely lighten their black charges’ skins (specially those of women for some reason), I wouldn’t be any more surprised or find it any more stupid than when I see those shiny, shiny white hands gesturing in front of a 7-shades-darker nose.
Not being snide at all. I was honestly confused as to what you attributed their lighter skins to, if you didn’t believe creams could do that. Your OP didn’t give any insight into what you thought were alternative hypotheses, such a makeup, lighting effects, etc. These too can make skin look light.
As already mentioned, hydroquinone is well-known for its bleaching effects. It’s the active ingredient in a lot of products marketed for blemish removal. 2% is the highest you can get over the counter in the US, and since that’s fairly weak, that’s probably why you don’t see many people over here looking like Kartel. But overseas, you can get it at much stronger concentrations. I’ve seen African people who show the weird kind of paleness that suggests overuse of hydroquinone, and none of them are rich by any means.
Celebrities show it the worst probably because they have the money to pay for the really strong stuff, as well as other treatments (e.g. acid peels) that make skin look paler. They probably can also afford to use the harsh stuff under the observation of a physician, who can do things to minimize the damaged appearance that these chemicals cause.
Ok, Face. Sorry I misunderstood. Thank guys, for the info. It is such a weird subject. In one of the articles I read about Kartel, he said he didn’t think it was a big deal. Just a preference for lighter skin. I can actually understand that. Just like some folks prefer blue eyes or arched eye brows or whatever else. But on the other hand, I always took him for a revolutionary spirit on blackness, and I am disappointed to see what seems like self-loathing now.
Hmmm…self-loathing might be too strong a word. And I understand that there are a lot of racial complexities here that I can never fully understand. (But.) I think my nose is a little too wide to be really perfect. If I want to, I can have surgery to correct that, and no one will really have a problem with it. But Michael Jackson thinks his nose is too wide and has surgery to correct it and suddenly he’s all “self-loathing” and a traitor to his race. Really? Maybe he just thought his nose was a little too wide to be really perfect. Maybe he was thinking just like I think. But because “wide nose” isn’t a trait widely associated with my race, I’m not making a racial statement when I think my nose is too wide.
Now, if this singer is singing that *everyone *with dark skin should lighten it and people who have dark skin are bad people, then sure, I can see self loathing and letting you down on the “revolutionary spirit in blackness” thing. But maybe he would just like for his own skin to be a different shade than it is naturally, the same way Snooki wants her skin to be a different shade than it is naturally. (Personally, I think it makes him look like a sick elderly woman, but I can’t hold him to my standards of beauty.)
I come off as hopelessly naive here, don’t I? Sorry about that. But I do think that not every individual preference has to be a Statement, you know?
WhyNot, you are saying exactly what I’ve been thinking. On one side of my mind. On the other side, I am lamenting the loss of an artist that would inspire little black babies in Jamaica to adore black skin. So confusing.
But you are totally nailing my conflict. I have always wondered just how wide does a black person’s nose have to be before wanting to narrow it isn’t considered ‘wanting to be white’.
