Skin Bleaching

Eli Goodman

10/26/14                         Skin Bleaching Blog Post

As ridiculous and degrading as it sounds, people of color can bleach their skin to make it lighter. Doing this will make clients of bleaching products appear more “beautiful”, “acceptable”, and let’s address the elephant in the room and say more “white”. These bleaching products are largely marketed/targeted to African-American women. People of color consistently face institutional racism, symbolic racism, micro-racism, and “colorism”.

Last year in Race Reels, we watched a documentary called Dark Girls that discussed this idea of “Colorism”. They defined colorism as “prejudice or discrimination based on the relative lightness or darkness of the skin and generally a phenomenon occurring within one’s own ethnic group”. The second piece of the definition was interesting.

This concept goes all the way back to slavery and slave rapes that changed complexions through generations. It is the difference between the “house n*ggas and the field n*iggas”. A “test” of beauty called the paper bag test basically states that if you’re lighter than a paper bag than you are pretty, smart, and ultimately pass the test. If you don’t pass the test, you are considered unattractive. 

Interestingly enough, the women who spoke in the documentary said a lot of this colorism comes from within the race. One woman said that she receives a lot of praise from white people about her skin, but she questions her complexion from the feedback of black people.

A black female talked about how her cousin made a Facebook status saying, “I love white girls!!! and nobody can do anything about it”. Black females receiving this type of attitude will have incentive to make their skin lighter and to boost their self esteem. It’s hard to fight unless you have confidence and it isn’t fair.

Skin bleach products come with serious health risks such as, premature aging of skin, skin cancer, infections, unwanted skin discoloration, and more.