Bleaching for Beauty

To Those Chocolate Ones." I would suggest you read this piece before continuing, unless you have already done so.

I was home for a lunch break, and decided to watch a little tv...just in time to catch the Tyra Banks show. There were 6 African American women on the panel, and they all bleach their skin so they can be lighter. Many voiced that they did so because they feel that being light can help you get ahead in life. All had been teased by kids in school, and each witnessed how light skinned girls in their classes were always picked first over the dark skinned girls. Still for others, they bleach because of all the attention they see lighter women get from men.

If that is not bad enough, some of these women are mothers. And unfortunately, they are passing their negative beliefs, about blackness and beauty, on to their children. One woman has a son by an Asian man, and admitted that she purposely had a child with him so that her child would be light. Another declared that she would NOT carry a dark skinned baby on her hip. One mother of three sons bleaches them, too (keep in mind her mother started bleaching her skin when she was 5yrs old). Another sister, in a desperate attempt to be lighter, put chlorine bleach (yes, the stuff you wash your white clothes with) on a hot towel and put it on her face! You can imagine the chemical burn she got from that!

Now, I must share with you all the reactions of the audience as they listened. Many of them were, quite literally, gasping. Now, I didn't expect the white, Asian, or even the Latinas to understand. But the black women in the audience...their reaction was what intrigued me. It was as if the women on the panel were crazy...like they were telling "stories" about society's behavior towards dark skinned women. I was like, come on, now! We in the black community KNOW this is an issue...we've been dealing with this since slavery. And trust, it is still going on, as evidenced by sisters bleaching their skin, the imbalanced representation of black women in the media, etc. You get the picture.

I used to see the same on sisters who bleach "back home" in Africa. Well, this show proved that African women in America bleach, too. Over the years, I'd always wondered why (and hated to see) all those bleaching products are in the beauty supply stores. It just seemed to me that nobody bought that stuff. Obviously, I was wrong.

This is just a reminder to sisters to love the skin you are in. For some, it may not be easy, especially if you grew up being made to feel "less than" because you are dark skinned. Yes, we are living in a society that puts lightness on a pedestal. The irony is that the same people who've convinced us that we are ugly are trying (damn near dying) to look like us!

This is an old wound in our community that needs healing. So, in the words of Dr. Joy Degruy: "let the healing begin." Let's begin to love and value ourselves...as we are. Let's tell our sons and daughters that they are beautiful. Let's break this cycle, so that sisters can stop disfiguring themselves with harsh chemicals in order to be somebody else's definition of beautiful.