Nigeria's dangerous skin whitening
obsession
Last updated: 6 hours ago
Nigeria has the world's highest percentage of
women using skin lightening agents in the
quest for "beauty".
Lagos, Nigeria - After carefully washing
her face, legs and arms, Taiwo Solomon
vigorously rubs cream over her body. She is
meticulous and makes sure she covers her entire
face. Soloman, 32, is bleaching her skin. She
believes fairer skin could be her ticket to a
better life. So she spends her meager savings
on cheap black-market concoctions that promise
to lighten her pigment.
This has been a daily routine for the past 15
years. Now several shades lighter she says her
new skin makes her feel more beautiful and
confident.
“Bleaching just makes me feel special, like
am walking around in a spotlight,” she told
Al Jazeera. “I am not seeking to be totally
white, I just want to look beautiful. I cannot
stop using the lightening agents,” she adds.
Solomon is not alone. According to the World
Health Organisation (WHO), 77 percent of
women in Nigeria use skin-lightening
products, the world’s highest percentage. That
compares with 59 percent in Togo, and 27
percent in Senegal. The reasons for this are
varied but most people say they use skin-
lighteners because they want "white skin".
In many parts of Africa, lighter-skinned
women are considered more beautiful and are
believed to be more successful and likely to
find marriage.
It's not only women though who are obsessed
with bleaching their skins. Some men too are
involved in the practice.
Conceptions of beauty
Lightening creams are not effectively
regulated in Nigeria where even roadside
vendors sell tubes and plastic bags of powders
and ointments from cardboard boxes stacked
along sidewalks in market districts. Many of
the tubes are unlabelled as to their actual
ingredients.
"An African will prefer to be called
John-Philip. If you said your name was
Chukwu Emeka Afongkudong they will
say you are from the village. You are
backward. How can you have such a name?
We really look down on our culture and
heritage instead of being proud of it. "
- Femi Kut, Nigerian Musician
In a market in Lagos, Nigeria's commercial
capital, business is booming for shops selling
skin-lightening products. Both local and
imported products line the shelves of Rashida
Lawal’s cosmetics shop.
"About 90 percent of my clients come asking
for skin whitening products," she told Al
Jazeera. "I sell it to them and give advice on
what product is best for them and how to use
them."
She says most of her customers are in a great
haste to lighten their skin.
“Taking the color of your skin to different
colour has to be gradual. It's not something
you decide one day that 'I want to be fair, I
want to be like Michael Jackson and you
become Michael Jackson all of a sudden'.
That is why we have to advise them first
before selling it to them” said Lawal.
Rashida and her staff also mix different
ointments and creams for customers
“depending on the desired level of lightness”.
Famous Nigerian Musician Femi Kuti says
the use skin-lightening products have given
rise to their own terminology.
“When the bleaching propaganda got so
negative, they had to come up with toning.
Bleaching sounds too hard, now it’s toning. I
don't bleach, they say, I tone!”
“They think bleaching is gege,” he told Al
Jazeera, using a Nigerian term for cool.
Femi attributes skin bleaching to a feeling
that foreign products and images must, by
definition, be good.
“An African will prefer to be called John-
Philip. If you said your name was Chukwu
Emeka Afongkudong they will say you are
from the village. You are backward. How can
you have such a name? We really look down on
our culture and heritage instead of being
proud of it,” he laments.
Dangerous consequences
Skin bleaching comes with hazardous health
consequences. The dangers associated with the
use of toxic compounds for skin bleaching
include blood cancers such as leukemia and
cancers of the liver and kidneys as well as
severe skin conditions.
Hardcore bleachers use illegal ointments
containing toxins like mercury, a metal that
blocks production of melanin, which gives the
skin its colour, but can also be toxic.
Ayobode Williams, a medical doctor, says the
skin bleaching agents have both internal and
external effects on those who use them.
“Systemically it causes things like kidney
failure because of the mercury in some of the
products and it also causes eczema, skin
pigmentation among a host of other
infections,” he told Al Jazeera.
Dr Williams warned that sustained use of
bleaching agents could cause even cancer.
Yet few seem to pay attention to these
dangers. For those who bleach, staying black
is not beautiful at all.

m.aljazeera.com/se/20134514845907984

Naija no dey carry last

Especially iborhs! .........

Temismith: Especially iborhs! .........

u don start......hw u take knw