Sindiwe Mvubu 15 years old


Skin bleaching and African beauty: Why do some people of African descent bleach their skin? What does this say about them?

To ask someone the purpose of skin bleaching, the most frequent answer to receive is to look lighter and more beautiful to the eye. But is skin bleaching really this simple or is it just to look lighter than the colour God gave you, or to compete with other people to have the beautiful status symbol.

I say No.

Something in one’s mind tells them they are not beautiful. Many dark skinned women think they are not beautiful as they are regarded as mean, evil and stupid unlike light skinned who are perceived as attractive, intelligent, moral and fair skinned. Because confidence lacks they cannot say I look good today or God made me beautiful and I know I am beautiful. I therefore do not need to look for chemical products to enhance beauty.

Is this just the only reason why people of African descent bleach their skin? I want you to keep this question in your mind whilst I elucidate more. There is no doubt that things like, people, TV, magazines, films and so on, influence millions of people worldwide to think whiteness and lightness is a symbol of what is attractive, adorable, desirable, pure and loveable. Physical attractiveness is associated with social, intellectual, dominance and potency and this usually has more bearing on women than men. This explains why more women buy the skin creams and bleaching products. It's been reported women are perceived as more feminine and attractive, the lighter their skin colour is the more attractive they are.

We all have something in our minds that wants us to have everything picture perfect, the perfect home for families, perfect job, even perfect food. Imagine yourself in the supermarket with your trolley ready to pick vegetable and fruits; when you pick up a pepper you go for the one which is the most perfect looking, not one with black bits or other bad qualities but the perfect one. It’s about being perfect.

Being perfect is the worst thing you could try to aim and achieve, no matter how hard you try, it just never is enough. One source of influence I mentioned that works hard at being perfect are magazines who only feature the top prettiest famous people. Someone passing by one of these magazines has that immediate thought that these people are perfect, even if they weren’t perfect the magazine would make them perfect with new technology such as Photoshop and Airbrushing. An argument would be they aren’t always this pretty or light but it's a rare occasion when you see a famous person without all the make up and see the true them unless it's a name and shame game, famous people want to be remembered as having the really good looks and so do readers and fans.

Most black famous role models are pictured lighter, the studio lights are adjusted so that they appear to be lighter skinned. This could simply be an attempt to appear lighter. What we have to understand though is that these people are seen as perfect to the eye, pale skin is shown as perfect skin. If lighter wasn’t perfect why do they appear lighter? An argument could be to clear blemishes and spots but you have to think by clearing the blemishes and spots it makes them more perfect. That influences people of African descent to do the same, to use bleaching or skin creams to make themselves look perfect.

So how do we know that lighter skinned people are in fact what the world thinks is beautiful? Stereotyping. Stereotyping that has been passed from older generations down to present generations in their family. Everybody has their stereotype of the beautiful people in the world and you just can't help to compare yourselves to them, whether they are of a totally different race and background, you will compare hair, body, and features. In their mind that idol is beautiful and nothing is wrong with them. However the downside though to comparing is that God made us all different, nobody is the same but this is forgotten and when that person find no similarities to their idol they instantly think they are ugly. Idols change as stereotypes of beautiful people change and that person who once compared themselves to their own idol will soon compare themselves to many others and this just begins the downward spiral of disliking themselves even more.

Is skin bleaching really about beauty? If so what is the root cause of this? To answer these two questions we need to look at the history of black people. From the time black and white people came into contact, black people were always the underdog. White people managed to overpower black people and establish their race as the supreme race. Even today there are many examples of white supremacists like Eugene Terblanch of South Africa. White people believe themselves to be supreme in terms of colour, culture, intelligence and religion. Thus racism was born. Therefore centuries and centuries of white dominance over black people particularly through slavery led to white being equal to goodness, lightness and angels etcetera etcetera; and black being equalled to evil, darkness and badness. This has resulted in a black race that is undermined, undervalued and basically seen as no good. The whole fabric of black culture, language, religion, customs, just the very essence of being black has been torn apart over centuries of white dominance.

The impact of this on black people’s self esteem, self worth, self identity has been devastating. When my cousin was younger she told her mum that she wanted to be ‘white because she wanted to be sunny’. This illustrates the devastating impact that white dominance has had on black people. She was young and it tells us a very disturbing fact that young children think and believe white is beautiful. Skin bleaching is the most accessible way that black people can try to copy white people. Even among black people themselves skin tone can play a devastating part in families. Lighter skinned children can be favoured over darker skinned children. Imagine then this situation in the racist world that we live in. Some black people have seen skin bleaching as a means of being successful. An advert in India illustrates this: a dark skinned woman is seen as a disappointment by her father, she then buys a skin lightening product and the resulting lighter skin colour gets her a good job, she is successful and her father is happy. We live with these sort of images everyday of our lives. No wonder some black people have resorted to skin bleaching in order to survive.

A bad role model about skin bleaching is Michael Jackson, the rumours about his colour change were undoubtedly the biggest issue for skin bleaching there ever was and probably ever will be. As the question of whether he did it to change colour or because he was ill still bothers many minds. If famous and rich black people like Michael Jackson can resort to skin bleaching what does this say about the self esteem confidence and self worth of black people in general.

Skin bleaching goes to show that people of African descent need to have 4 main things when growing up to stop the high numbers of African people bleaching their skin:: self worth, self belief, self confidence, self esteem and self actualisation. As my mother says ‘the first step to solving an issue is recognizing it’. I hope that reading my essay will encourage children, youth, young adults and elderly to recognise there is something that’s not right around us. We must take action, we must build our race. We must support each other to see that we have a history, culture and background that is worth any other history culture or background, and that we as a race are beautiful as we are.