http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2013/04/20134514845907984.html

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.

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.

Arent u tired?

Filthy nasty skin bleaching dogs from Nigga-Area! The dirty slowpoke nation in West Africa.

80 percent of the dogs there bleach their ugly faces!!!!


That would mean 136 million people in Nigeria bleach their face! What a disgrace to the international black community!! Inferiority complex filled dogs! Useless pigs! Filthy rats! dirty donkeys!


Nigga-Area, a country we liberated from colonial rule now has the audacity to insult Glorious Ghana! How dare they!! Useless dogs!! This is the thanks we get after liberating these pigs!!!

A bleached faced dog will NOT lead the revolution!! Only Ghanaian RULE can save West Africa

Fuelish: feulish goat.u r a frustrated n sick modafaka!

Lol dnt mind him. He is the biggest liar ever and from day 1 he has been lying and telling contradictory stories. He is just a frustrated individual. lol leave him to continue to dream about his fantasy girlfriend and world. Poor guy smdh

CAMEROONPRIDE: Arent u tired?

lol the baboon is gone so going to call it a nyt

Cusubaba: When am through with my Glo network job in Benin Republic and Ghana next year April. I will dump my Ghana girl friend and come back to Naija and marry my decent, beautiful Naija girl. That is all, Goodnight.

Mumu always boasting.When it suits you u say u live and work in Cote d Ivore .Man get life .u not real from yr discription of Yorubas and Ghanaians.I pity any Gh lady who would agree to have a date with a babbon like u

Cusubaba is a 53 year old unemployed paranoid schizophrenic with delusions of grandeur. Take him as a source of entertainment

Royal^Pearl^:


lol the baboon is gone so going to call it a nyt

lmao

chriskwaku: Mumu always boasting.When it suits you u say u live and work in Cote d Ivore .Man get life .u not real from yr discription of Yorubas and Ghanaians.I pity any Gh lady who would agree to have a date with a babbon like u

Lol today he is in Ghana, tomorrow Gabon, the following day ivory coast lol ppl can dream. i would advice him to use his vivid imagination for creative purposes like writing a book about his "african adventures" or somethin that can make him less idle

chriskwaku: Mumu always boasting.When it suits you u say u live and work in Cote d Ivore .Man get life .u not real from yr discription of Yorubas and Ghanaians.

he cant live in a country he hates n prosper!it's a fact,not a curse!

Goodnyt my bros Smoothlife, chriskwaku, fuelish, Bigo8291 and Cameroonpride

[quote author=Royal^Pearl^]Goodnyt my bros Smoothlife, chriskwaku, fuelish and Cameroonpride[/quote. Sound sleep

Royal^Pearl^:
Goodnyt my bros Smoothlife, chriskwaku, fuelish and Cameroonpride

goodnite,dear. I'm sure we'll be back here soon!

Fuelish: goodnite,dear. I'm sure we'll be back here soon!

Lol true, there is always something abt Ghana

Goodbye pearl..abeg go easy on the dude

CAMEROONPRIDE: Goodbye pearl..abeg go easy on the dude

WOW, African actors now are getting very hollywood. Getting divorce after being married for few years, hooking up with co-worker

Cusubaba: Uche Ofodile is the Managing Director of Vodafone in Ghana. She is happily married with 4 kids and she doesn't have anything to do a dwarf ugly charcoal 4x4 ape..

get ur tissues ready and cry because that 4x4 Ghanaian guy has been scattering that your igbo girls toto like nobody's business with his 9mm, see, the difference between Ghanaian men and Nigerian men is, Ghanaian men run things but don't brag about it, Nigerians on the other end, Jus brag about everything, even if a Nigerian bangs a mad woman on the streets of monrovia in Liberia, he will brag about banging 10 Liberian women. Cusubaba! You have been exposed way too much on this thread with your lies, it's best you shut up. I know your type, poor Nigerian gloating on som1 else's success, be careful guy

After years of speculations, Captain Planet, a member of music trio, 4x4, has come out publicly to confirm that he is in a serious relationship with Uche Ofodile, Chief Marketing Officer of Vodafone Ghana.

Although news about their relationship has been in the media for years, the two have failed to confirm its existence especially when they have not been spotted together publicly.

But a single Anadwo Yede released by 4x4 (also made up CoDed and Fresh Prince) with the lyrics Wetin na ur name Ofodile Oche by Captain Planet seems to give credence to the widely speculated rumour.

Captain Planet, known in real life as Jeff Sylvanus Dodji, told Myjoyonline.com in an interview that it’s about time he sets the records straight and affirms their relationship.

He said: “Yes I am dating Uche. She is beautiful, lovely and caring, and I'm so proud of her.” He added that they have been dating for the past two years.

Asked about the significance of the lyrics in the new song, the leader of 4x4 said it is to clear the air on the relationship.

He noted that he deserves some props for mentioning the love of his life's name in the song.

Captain Planet however quizzed: “How many musicians since the inception of hiplife have been bold enough to mention their girlfriend’s name in a song?”

Jeff Sylvanus Dodji disclosed that their love relationship is not a fiction and that “we are getting married soon. We are in the process.”

According to him, their wedding “will happen here [in Accra] live and coloured.”

Pushed further on how soon Ghanaians should expect the wedding, Captain Planet said a date has not been set yet but “when we settle on the date, I will let you know.”

http://entertainment.myjoyonline.com/pages/news/201304/104544.php

just wish u a happy married life.