MELANIN SO DARK

        There’s this ongoing outrage on social media concerning the Dencia - Black Chyna Whitenicious launch. A lot of people feel strongly about it because to them we shouldn’t be promoting bleaching creams in this time and age.

People then started arguing about what causes people to bleach in the first place and during this argument I tweeted something along the lines of:
“No matter how you want to spin it, bleaching most of the time is as a result of low self- esteem. Let’s tackle that first before we start talking of what caused them to have low self- esteem in the first place”
     
       A while later, my friends Ehiane and Josephine saw the tweet and replied that they didn’t quite agree with my view. I maintained my stance and so we decided to take it to whatsapp to argue it out. Now, though my camera and lighting often tend to make me seem lighter than I am, I’m actually dark skinned and one of the major things I’ve battled with ever since is loving and accepting my skin-tone as it is. Because of this, I felt I had a really good argument as it’s a struggle I’ve personally experienced.
   

      Let me give a little back story about myself. The struggle to get to where I am now as regards acceptance of my skin wasn’t an easy one. Growing up dark-skinned, you tend to get a lot of remarks from people ranging from half-baked compliments such as “you’re pretty for a dark-skinned girl “ or “you’re fine o, but if you were fairer you would have been soo fine” to direct attacks like “your skin is dirty” , “you really need to brighten up”. These statements really affected me during my teenage years  and so I started experimenting with bleaching creams and soaps in late secondary school, this was around 2011. Then I’d go on the internet and search for bleaching creams and their reviews. People also used a lot of bleaching creams then in school because a lot of people wanted to get a couple of shades lighter. I did a lot of trial and error because most of these creams as we know have bad side effects, some gave me really bad acne, blackheads, etc. I actually started using my present lotion because I wanted it to bleach me. It didn’t, but I noticed it had a smoothening effect on my skin and it kept me moisturized (I have really dry skin). It was better than any other regular moisturizer I used before, so I decided to stick with it even though it didn't give me the bleaching effect I wanted. I focused on lightening soaps instead.
     

     I entered university with the same mentality. The turning point for me was around September 2016. Prior to then, I wanted to brighten up so bad because the half-baked compliments were still coming in and it seemed like everybody was using at least one product to brighten up their skin. I spent time looking for more “powerful” (and affordable) bleaching agents. I came across this "strong" soap on the internet around August 2016 and I’ll withhold the name because I don’t want anybody to read this and look for the soap. I found it easily in the supermarket so I started using it. This soap both damaged and saved me. It damaged me in the sense that it gave me the typical “coke and fanta” body after using it for about a month ( August to September). It was TERRIBLE and for the first time in my life I wanted to go back to being dark just so my skin could be even again. I started thinking of "neutral soaps" I could use and so I bought Dettol Even tone soap as I figured it could help. I was so scared I would never revert to my original shade but thank God I did. Luckily for me, I didn’t have to resume school yet as at then because I was doing my IT so I had enough time to undo my deeds before people saw me.
 

       At that point I had to ask myself “What exactly are you doing Matilda??”. I had to really dig deep and find out why I let people's opinions get to me so much. I then promised myself to not let anybody’s comments about my skin tone affect me again. I told myself I was going to love and accept my skin as it was because God that created me knew exactly what He was doing and He does not make mistakes, so why should I try to fix what’s not broken? From then, I worked on loving myself. As I am now, I can’t imagine what anybody would tell me that’d would make me feel bad about my skin tone.


       Having reached this point, it seemed pretty logical  to me that the solution to this problem was teaching people how to love themselves. That was why my tweet stated that bleaching stemmed from low self- esteem and once you tackle that, people won’t see the need to bleach irrespective of what anybody tells them. I felt since it worked for me, it would work for anybody else and that’s where I was wrong. I failed to acknowledge the fact that part of the reasons I resorted to bleaching creams in the first place was because of comments I got from people, they made me feel like something was wrong with my skin and I had to fix it. I argued back and forth with Josephine and Ehiane as they were trying to make me see that society’s influence is just as important. It got to a point where I realized I sounded like one of those people that say things like “poor people are only poor because they don’t work hard enough”, I wasn’t acknowledging the other important factors that contributed to the problem.
 

       Now, the bleaching epidemic is CRAZY! Everywhere in the market, shopping malls, Instagram, someone is trying to market a brightening cream, “fast action within 5 days lightening lotion”, bleaching soaps. People mix different creams together, some mix relaxers inside their cream, some baking soda and all sorts of crazy ingredients. People just buy these things without even knowing the constituents of what they’re about to put on their skin. Skin care vendors capitalize on people’s ignorance and lack of willingness to know. A lot of them sell products that aren’t even tested or verified and people buy. The bleaching industry is an ever-booming market because every single day, we have people looking for how to brighten their skin. If you go on Youtube, check the number of views on all these “how I got 5 shades lighter” videos or “lightening agents you can find at home that work”, they always have plenty views because people are ever looking for these things. Some people get disappointed because their babies are not as light as they want and some go as far as using lightening creams, injections on their children right from a young age. WE NEED TO STOP THIS MADNESS!!!!!!
   

      Majority of these bleaching products are harmful. Even if they don’t damage you short term, they will long term. A lot of people get skin cancer from these products, people get terrible skin discolorations, people have green and red veins showing through their skin because they've used so many bleaching products that the damage is now irreversible. We really need to stop it.
   

         I try to be a solution-oriented person, so after my discussion with Josephine and Ehiane, I sat back to think of possible solutions that can help curb the bleaching epidemic asides just telling people to love themselves. I came up with a few that I think can help:

1. Stop with the half-baked compliments
“You’re pretty for a dark-skinned babe” , “You’re fine, but if you were lighter you’d be finer” are NOT compliments. Instead tell people “you’re pretty” or “Your skin is really nice”.
    Affirm them, make people feel beautiful and encourage them to love themselves as they are. If you cannot compliment properly it’s best to just keep quiet because when you give people half-baked compliments you make them feel like yeah, they look ok but there’s something they can do to look better i.e. bleach. Let’s try and be kind to one another, telling someone that their skin is dirty is not kind!

2. Stop projecting your insecurities on others
    The fact that you see dark-skin as less beautiful does not mean you should go about sharing your unsolicited opinions to dark-skinned people. That’s a reflection of you and your insecurity and it’s your burden, don’t force others to share it with you. Stop advising people to lighten their skin, it’s not proper. And YES, I’m angry about this particular one in case you’re wondering.


3. Beauty brands need to do better
    Most of my melanin sisters will agree with me that it is hard to find your exact shade of powder, foundation, etc. For a while I had to mix foundations ( 1 shade lighter + 1 shade darker ) to get something close to my skin tone because I just couldn’t find my shade around. Whenever I walk into a beauty store, I just straight up ask them to give me their darkest shade. I find products for myself at times but I wonder what people darker than me are meant to use if the darkest shade in the store is my color.
  A lot of times, when you see dark-skinned babes with mismatched foundations, it’s really not their fault. Beauty brands don’t cater to darker skin tones enough and so people don’t have an option but to opt for what is closest to their color. These brands need to be more inclusive of darker ranges of products.
   

4. The media needs to be more inclusive of dark-skinned women
     I always love seeing women like Tika Sumpter, Viola Davis, Danai Gurira, Aja Naomi King, Naomi Campbell, my darling Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and a couple of others in the mainstream media because these are women as dark/ almost as dark as me. If we’re being honest with ourselves, we’ll admit that they are not that many in the media.
     Musicians as well, tend to use lighter models for their videos. I named this article after the song Melanin by Sauti Sol. That is my favorite Sauti Sol song because it makes me feel beautiful, like dark skinned babes are beautiful. They also used darker girls in the video. We need more of that, people need to see dark skinned people on TV so they can look up to them and appreciate their beauty.



        It's not enough to simply tell people to love themselves more, we should all try to be accepting of people as they are. Let’s stop putting this negative idea in people’s minds that if they were lighter, they’d be more beautiful. People resort to harmful products in order to be more societally validated and accepted and on the long run, a lot of these products have harmful health effects. We all should do better. If you have more suggestions on how we can tackle this problem, feel free to share them in the comment section.
   
       Also, thanks Josephine and Ehiane for enlightening me. I did some introspecting because of you guys and that was how I came up with this article. Have a nice day!

              *Melanin playing in the background*