Beauty and the Bleach: This Issue is More than Skin Deep

Posted in Articles, Health/Medicine/Genetics, Media Archive, Social Science on 2016-06-20 21:30Z by Steven

Beauty and the Bleach: This Issue is More than Skin Deep

Ebony
2016-06-20

Yaba Blay, Dan Blue Endowed Chair in Political Science
North Carolina Central University

Skin bleaching is a billion-dollar industry. Considering its global reach, Dr. Yaba Blay says we have to stop treating bleaching as just a matter of self-hate.

Over the past few years, social media has been abuzz with discussions of skin bleaching. In recent weeks, we’ve lamented Lil Kim’s ghostly shadow of her former self, ridiculed Ghanaian boxer Bukom Banku for denouncing his black skin, and dragged Azaelia Banks for becoming a virtual spokesmodel for Whitenicious by Dencia. While we talk amongst ourselves, a segment of a 2012 video investigating “unusual beauty trends” in Jamaica has resurfaced on Facebook. Viewed over two million times in less than one week, in that segment we see a soft-spoken blonde-haired European reporter “in the trenches” as she talks to a number of Jamaicans about their bleaching and offers requisite warnings about the dangers of the practice.

Whether from the perspectives of Black folks or from those of Whites, our communal voyeurism into skin bleaching tends to focus almost solely on the individuals who bleach their skin, and not the global institutions that make skin bleaching a viable option. And it’s a problem…

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Ghana To Ban Skin Bleaching Products in August

Posted in Africa, Articles, Health/Medicine/Genetics, Media Archive, Politics/Public Policy on 2016-05-29 19:51Z by Steven

Ghana To Ban Skin Bleaching Products in August

The Root
2016-05-29

Angela Bronner Helm, Adjunct Profesor of Journalism
City College of New York

The government of Ghana will ban all products containing hydroquinone this summer.

Colorism, that which privileges lighter skin over darker, is an issue that not only affects African Americans, but pretty much all people of color around the world.

From India to Compton, Brazil to Belize, one of the ways in which colorism rears its ugly head is in skin bleaching. We have all seen photos where celebrities such as Dominican baseball player Sammy Sosa or Nigerian-Cameroonian pop singer Dencia bleached their beautiful brown skin to odd shades not found in nature, ostensibly for beauty and prestige. As far back as the 1990s, the Jamaican dancehall song “Dem a Bleach” talked about the phenomenon of using chemicals to alter the color of brown skin.

But the West African nation of Ghana is putting the kibosh on that…

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