Does black skin really matter?

Sometime during the week, I met an elderly lady at the grocery store. I was at the check-out counter when she came up behind me, patiently waiting for her turn.

Our eyes met briefly and we exchanged polite smiles. I observed the items in her basket and tried hard to look away as if minding my business, but for where! She caught me spying several times. Pretending to assist her with her grocery bag, I enquired who the items were for. She confirmed that it was for her teenage daughters. They had asked her to buy Dove moisturizing cream along with two tubes of cheap, potent steroids, which would later be mixed with the moisturizer. In their young naïve minds, mixing the steroids with an expensive moisturizer would make their young skin, soft and most importantly ‘yellow’.

The cream is supposed to dampen the harsh effect of the bleaching agent. Chemistry 101. This woman listened to me, or at least pretended to, while I preached about the harmful effects of skin bleaching to her, in hopes that it would reach the ears of her daughters.

This is the plight of girls in Africa. A silent cancer that is eating away at the skin and self-esteem of our young girls- and now men-the world over. Women bleaching their beautiful skin occultly and overtly in the society. Shelves in supermarkets are lined with all manner of bleaching agents, from the cheapest to the most expensive. And for those who are even more desperate- the experts await them in the market. In the popular Sabon Gari market in Kano, a man simply referred to as ‘Yellow’ specialises in mixing bleaching creams to give you the colour tone you desire; from chocolate caramel to Caucasian white, you name it, he can do it. Make up artists are not left behind as they are purposely told by their clients to make them fairer not minding that their faces do not match the colour of their necks!

How did we get here you ask? It is an open secret; the romance between the Northern Nigerian man and the fair-skinned woman has been present since time immemorial. Phrases like ‘Fara ko Mayya’ (Loosely translated to mean: I would rather a fair lady even if she is a witch), or ‘Fara ko Mahaukaciya’ (I would rather a fair lady even if she is a mad woman) are tossed around carelessly and ingrained in the minds of young boys and girls. So, the boys grow up believing only the fair girls are beautiful while the girl’s self-esteem is dependent largely on the colour of her skin.

There are a lot of campaigns aimed at creating awareness and improving self-esteem among black women but the truth still remains that until we change the way the men think, we are fighting a losing battle. Lupita Nyong’o can preach about self-love and spearhead all the ‘melanin poppin’ slogans but as long as only the yellow girls get the fine, handsome and rich husbands, then dark-skinned girls will continue to bleach their skin till thy kingdom come. Because let’s face it, who are girls bleaching for anyway? For the men of course! To get their attention. To be pretty. To have many boyfriends. To snag an equally attractive husband. To be ‘liked’ and ‘loved’ on Instagram. To make it to the cover of Ovation and other equally materialistic magazines.

In simpler terms- for vanity. And to be perfectly honest, vanity, though largely relative and subjective, is a fundamental human trait. Everyone wants to be loved and appreciated.

I met a girl once at a salon in Abuja who had come in for some sort of facial treatment. She had many acne scars which she was conscious of and attempted to treat with high potency steroids. I explained to her the vicious cycle she was in; the more steroids she used the more acne would erupt leading to more steroid use, and so on. From her knuckles, I could see that she was a lovely caramel complexion and so I bravely asked her reason for bleaching her skin. Her story, though pathetic, was largely familiar. She was the first of five children in the family. Her two younger sisters were both married. They had taken after their mother, a fair-skinned, beautiful Fulani woman. She, however, was the exact replica of her father, a dark-skinned Kanuri man. Right from childhood, her younger sisters had more friends and got more gifts from their relatives. Careless jabs like ‘you have to make a lot of money to marry this one of’ were said to her hearing. It therefore came as no surprise when her sisters both had suitors falling at their feet while she had none. She was working in a bank when we met and had started bleaching five years prior as she felt it would be a solution to her life’s problem. How can self-love possibly compete with this amount of degradation?

How do we curb this menace in our society? And more importantly, are we ready to stop this menace?