Written by: Sunday Akanni Moshood

I'm going straight to the point here....

Whenever we see the picture of a once-dark-lady who bleached her skin to become white, we give both the lady and the act terrible condemnations. Nevertheless, that doesn't stop another person from going ahead to bleach their skin tomorrow. Why? Simply because our method of discouraging people from the act isn't effective enough.

I'm sure we all already know the consequences of using those 'skin changing chemical agents'- and we always say it at all times (and even those who bleaches their skins are aware of the not-too-pleasant side-effects). Despite the fact that we always place emphasis on the dangers of skin bleaching, why do people continue doing it? Well, I think it's because we aren't looking at things from the 'foundational perspective'.

Why Do People Bleach Their Skins?

People bleach their skins from black to white because they don't love themselves being black.

They live inside a 'black society' where members of the society regards being fair in complexion as 'cute' (or 'fine oyinbo pepper'), and being black in complexion as 'manageable' (or 'blacky shadow')

And mind you, every young adult desires to be regarded as a 'fine boy' or 'fine girl'. So, if we made it seem that only a fair/yellow in complexion person can be a 'fine boy/girl', the dark in complexion amongst them will definitely bleach their skins irrespective of how loud you're blazing the consequences of skin bleaching.

Solution...

It begins with the society.

Let us stop portraying 'black' as 'ugly'. You hear some adults say things like:

"See as you black, don't you use to bathe properly"

Things like that made young minds see 'black' as abnormality.

Then also, let us always teach young people the importance/need of self-esteem and self-acceptance. Let's tell them to love themselves, as they are special - irrespective of their skin colors. For the religious ones among us, let's tell them that God has a reason for creating them as who they are (as a male and not female, as blacks and not as whites, etc).

Once all black people see that their self-worth is way beyond their skin colors, I'm assuring you that the issue of skin bleaching will become a thing of the past. Thanks for reading. God bless us all.

http://www.mytrugists.com/2016/10/how-to-discourage-people-from-skin.html?m=1

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