Skin-lightening involves the application of various cosmetic products to the skin with the aim of obtaining a lightened complexion by reducing its melanin content. Skin-lightening is currently “one of the most common forms of potentially harmful body modification practices in the world” ⁽²⁾ and African women are among some of the most widely represented users of skin-lightening products. Despite government efforts to ban these products and public health campaigns discouraging their use, the desire for light skin has accelerated over the last few decades and the market for skin-lightening products has boomed in many parts of the world. Studies indicate that their use is growing fastest among young, urban, educated women in the global south where light skin operates as a form of symbolic capital.⁽³⁾ Scholars believe that the racial legacy of colonialism alone is not a sufficient explanation for the recent rise in the use of skin-lighteners. This CAI paper considers capitalism, western consumer culture and persisting white/western supremacy ideals, to fully understand the motives driving this practice.

Skin-lightening users, products and their consequences

These products commonly contain hydroquinone, corticosteroids, mucurials, and other caustic agents (hypocholoride sodium, salicylic acid, detergents etc.) that are related to a number of health problems.⁽⁴⁾ A study conducted in Senegal found that 75% of women using these products showed cutaneous adverse effects.⁽⁵⁾

Researchers estimate that 25% of women in Bamaki, Mali use skin-lightening products. In Pretoria, South Africa, 35% are users. A further 52 % of women in Dakar, Senegal use skin-lightening products and in Lagos, Nigeria, a study found that 77 % of women traders use skin lightening products.⁽⁶⁾ Other African countries where these products are reportedly used include Togo, Zimbabwe, Ivory Coast, Gambia and Tanzania. Studies suggest that similar practices exist in the African populations of Europe, West Indies and Asia.⁽⁷⁾

Hydroquinone, originally employed as an industrial chemical, is used because of its effectiveness in suppressing melanin production. However, the use of this product is dangerous as a skin-lightening technique because exposure to the sun after application leads to skin damage. Long-term hydroquinone use can lead to a paradoxical increased pigmentation of the skin known as exogenous ochronosis.⁽⁸⁾ Other serious complications include loss of skin elasticity and impaired wound healing.⁽⁹⁾ The use of corticosteroids is associated with ophthalmologic, endocrinologic and cutaneous complications. These include glaucoma and cataracts, hypertension, diabetes mellitus, allergic contact dermatitis, eczema, atrophy of the skin and bacterial, viral and fungal infections.⁽¹⁰⁾ Murcurials have been banned in some countries, including South Africa, after they were recognized as toxic. They have proven “to be nephrotoxic via the absorption of mercury through the skin following repeated applications.”⁽¹¹⁾ Mercury poisoning may manifest in a range of symptoms including psychiatric, neurological, and kidney problems.⁽¹²⁾

Consumers become dependent on skin-lighteners, because of increased re-pigmentation. They feel pressure to continue using skin-lightening creams over long periods in order to maintain their newly acquired lighter skin tone.⁽¹³⁾ An attempt to discontinue use may also result in an “immediate flare-up of unsightly rashes,” further discouraging users to discontinue use.⁽¹⁴⁾ Due to the stigma shrouding the use of skin-lightening products, users suffering from withdrawal signs and symptoms are more likely to rebound and continue use rather than to seek medical attention.⁽¹⁵⁾

Motivation for use

Studies indicate that a desire to lighten the complexion is the main reason why people use these products. Women in Senegal associate fair skin tone with elegance, beauty and a higher social status.⁽¹⁶⁾ A study conducted in Tanzania found that many Tanzanians have embraced Eurocentric beauty ideals and feel pressured to look white. In this study a 25 year old reported that she “started bleaching to be beautiful and to look like Arabians or Europeans and attractive to people, especially men.”⁽¹⁷⁾

Other reasons for using skin-lighting products include a desire to even out skin tone/improve the texture of the skin, treatment of skin imperfections, to remove the adverse effects of extended skin bleaching, to satisfy one's partner or attract male companions, to satisfy or impress peers, to enhance opportunities in life (especially job opportunities), to reduce the experience of negative stereotypes that are applied to dark skinned people, for the enjoyment of light-coloured skin, fashion and dependency.⁽¹⁸⁾

In the Tanzanian study, women expressed their belief that Tanzanian men prefer white, soft-skinned girls. For this reason skin-lightening was of utmost importance in attracting male companions. Women in relationships continued use because they felt that light skin was a way in which they could satisfy their partners. One woman explained that she uses skin-lightening products to prevent her husband from being attracted to other girls.⁽¹⁹⁾ Many participants felt that their lighter skinned peers have higher status, income, education, job opportunities, as well as more friends. In the light of these observations, it is not surprising that “darker skinned people are often envious of those with lighter skin and attempt to achieve the same status by engaging in skin-lightening practices.”⁽²⁰⁾

Understanding these motivations: Colonialism and westernisation

The racist remnants left in the wake of colonisation unequivocally contribute to the preference for lighter skin tone. Establishing a racial hierarchy in which dark-skinned native Africans were considered primitive and inferior to light-skinned Europeans was a key method of control during the colonial period. Racial hierarchy justified unequal distribution of resources, domination and exploitation.⁽²¹⁾ During the colonial period, colonized people's culture and body images were constructed as pathological, backward and ugly. Corporeal blackness was associated with moral darkness, unrestrained sexuality, pollution, dirt and disease. A 1930 French advertisement for Dirtoff illustrates a dark African man washing his hands, which have become white. Advertisements like this one, a soap that cleanses so thoroughly that it even removes pigmentation, were common in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.⁽²²⁾ Some scholars argue that pre-colonial conceptions of female beauty favoured lighter skin tones. If racial preferences existed before, they were intensified by colonial racial hierarchies attaching privilege to light skin.⁽²³⁾

During colonialism, the dominating scientific gaze rooted in western philosophic thought provided a means by which the bodies of colonised subjects could be studied. Racist knowledge based on dichotomies was produced as undisputed scientific evidence, thereby justifying white supremacy.⁽²⁴⁾ The white body was represented as most virtuous and aesthetically most appealing so that whiteness became the paradigm, the standard, while blackness became the other: deviant, corrupt and unappealing.⁽²⁵⁾

Racial hierarchies persisted long after colonial rule, as did a racially stratified distribution of power and status. Western influence, such as global media, flooded a vulnerable African region during the post-colonial period thereby perpetuating these beliefs. Media images would portray lighter skin as beautiful and preferable over darker skin.⁽²⁶⁾ Even media, such as billboards, originating in Africa portrayed white-skinned people as icons of beauty. Until recently, the cosmetic industry produced cosmetics for light-skinned people alone, thereby reinforcing the association between light skin, beauty and affluence.⁽²⁷⁾ Studies suggest that the use of skin-lightening products is increasing in places where modernisation and the influence of western culture and capitalism are most prominent.⁽²⁸⁾

A study conducted in 2008 reveals that even in contemporary society, people's judgements about others are “literally coloured by skin tone.”⁽²⁹⁾ Darker-skinned individuals are considered “less intelligent, trustworthy and attractive.”⁽³⁰⁾ The widespread and growing consumption of skin-lightening products suggest that rather than decreasing, colorism (social hierarchy based on skin tone) is on the rise. Scholars suggest that the phenomenon of skin-lightening illustrates the workings of a western-dominated global system which promotes a “white is right” ideology and encourages the consumption of western culture and products.⁽³¹⁾ In the context of historical constructions of race fuelling racism, superiority and inferiority and contemporary emphasis on western supremacy, skin-lightening has emerged as an attempt to gain respectability, material privilege and social mobility.⁽³²⁾

A gendered perspective

It is important to consider skin-lightening from a gendered perspective, because the relations between skin colour and aesthetic and moral judgments affect women most acutely. Women, more than men, are judged heavily on the basis of appearance. As mentioned, skin colour can be seen as a form of symbolic capital that affects one's life opportunities. If women are held to higher beauty standards, then skin colour as determining life chances affects those most. Evelyn Glenn explains that men are more likely to be considered valuable when they have wealth, education and other forms of human capital, while women are considered valuable when they are physically attractive, even if they lack other capital.⁽³³⁾

Shyon Baumann argues that complexion ideals are related to dominant attitudes towards gender roles. He suggests that the cultural meanings associated with lightness and darkness is considered more ideally feminine and masculine, respectively. This highlights an important link between moral and aesthetic judgements, for the associations with lightness and darkness have moral connotations.⁽³⁴⁾ For example, Baumann illustrates how whiteness or lightness is associated with youth, innocence, purity, virginity, spirituality, vulnerability and delicacy, whilst darkness is associated with threat, aggression, virility, villainy and danger. Women are often held to higher standards of lightness than men because the meaning of lightness coincides with appropriate feminine gender roles. Women are expected to fulfil certain standards with regards to their virginity, innocence and purity. While women are praised for exemplifying these standards or behavioural qualities, they are also “rewarded for exemplifying the aesthetic characteristics that symbolizes them.”⁽³⁵⁾ An ideally fair woman is believed to have ideally feminine virtues and the ideally virtuous woman is considered to be ideally beautiful. On the other hand, stereotypes about black women associate their blackness with potent and active sexuality.⁽³⁶⁾

Advertising does not represent reality as it is, but as it should be. For this reason, advertising is a good site to observe dominant physical appearance ideals. Advertisements also depict the connections between complexion ideals, conceptions of gender roles as well as moral and aesthetic standards. In 2003-2004, Bauman undertook a content analysis of 2133 individuals appearing in print advertisements. He found that on average, women are portrayed as having fairer complexions than men of the same race. These gender differences in complexion highlight attractiveness ideals that are gender specific. Bauman also found that female models with darker complexions are more frequently overtly sexualised than their lighter skinned counterparts.⁽³⁷⁾ They were also more likely to be depicted in intimate contact with a man. Lighter skinned women however, were statistically more conservatively dressed and were more likely to appear alongside other women.⁽³⁸⁾

A global industry: Ethical concerns

The production and marketing of skin-lightening products offering the promise of lighter, whiter, skin has become a multi-billion dollar international industry.⁽³⁹⁾ Skin lightening has been incorporated into transnational flows of capital and culture and is implicated in both the formal global economy and various informal, often underground economies. Multinational corporations have jumped on the bandwagon and are spending large sums of money on research and development of both mass and specialised skin-lightening markets.⁽⁴⁰⁾ Advertisements create a need for skin-lighteners by depicting dark skinned women as unhappy, ignored by men and suffer from low self-esteem. Dark skin is presented as a burden or disease that can be cured with the use of skin-lightening products. Light skin is depicted as a necessity to being youthful, beautiful, modern and affluent.⁽⁴¹⁾

As this industry grows and more consumers are affected by its devastating consequences, ethical questions abound. Studies report the dumping of substandard products in the global south by overseas industries. Often these products were not passed for human use in their country of origin.⁽⁴²⁾ Many of the mercury soaps used by Africans are manufactured in the European Union (EU), where they are allowed to be manufactured as long as the product is exported. EU manufactured soaps are reportedly smuggled back into the EU where they are sold to African immigrant communities.⁽⁴³⁾ A number of third-world countries are believed to be used as off-shore production and distribution sites for western-based pharmaceutical companies.⁽⁴⁴⁾ The South African, Zimbabwean, Gambian and Kenyan governments have banned the import and sale of mercury and hydroquinone products. However, these bans are often poorly enforced and difficult to control due to the fact that they are smuggled in from other African or European nations.⁽⁴⁵⁾ Products remain easily available in African capitals where they are sold without medical prescription and control, hence fuelling the extensive and uncontrolled use of skin-lighteners. Counterfeit products and adulterations of branded products are commonly sold in backstreets or are even given out by physicians.⁽⁴⁶⁾ Scholars are critical of the western medical community who have failed to intervene in the production and use of these skin-lightening chemicals and who seem to dismiss their use as an exclusively black problem.⁽⁴⁷⁾

Conclusion

The use of skin lightening products in African countries is ongoing and growing, despite widespread public health campaigns and government bans. This calls for a drastic re-evaluation of the factors driving this devastating phenomenon. Government regulations and policies as well as public campaigns need to be based on an understanding of the motives behind the practice, and of course, stricter enforcement is necessary.⁽⁴⁸⁾ Studies suggest that much misinformation exists around the health consequences of skin lighteners and users rarely understand the important role of pigmentation in the skin.⁽⁴⁹⁾ This calls for government intervention and educational public messages.

The global issue of idealised depictions of women and men in the media is another factor that needs to be addressed. Complexion ideals in local and western media are a source of anxiety in women who then turn to harmful forms of body modification. Media images need to stress the diversity of types of beauty and desirability so that lightness/whiteness as the dominant standard may be challenged.⁽⁵⁰⁾

Finally, the powerful economic forces at play need to be understood and confronted. The manufacturing, advertising and selling of skin-lighteners has become a major growth market for multinational corporations. These corporations play a leading role in the creation and manipulation of needs and desires, often overtly supporting capitalist white supremacy.⁽⁵¹⁾

NOTES:

(1) Contact Nicola Hugo through Consultancy Africa Intelligence’s Gender Issues Unit (gender.issues@consultancyafrica.com).
(2) Lewis, K. M. et al., 2011. Investigating motivations for women’s skin bleaching in Tanzania. Psychology of Women Quarterly, 35(29), pp.29-37.
(3) Ibid.
(4) Ibid.
(5) Del Guidice, P. & Yves, P., 2002. The widespread use of skin lightening creams in Senegal: A persistent public health problem in west Africa. The International Society of Dermatology, 41, pp.69-72.
(6) Glenn, E. N., 2008. Yearning for lightness: Transnational circuits in the marketing and consumption of skin lighteners. Gender & Society, 22(3), pp.281-302.
(7) Del Guidice, P. & Yves, P., 2002. The widespread use of skin lightening creams in Senegal: A persistent public health problem in west Africa. The International Society of Dermatology, 41, pp.69-72.
(8) Glenn, E. N., 2008. Yearning for lightness: Transnational circuits in the marketing and consumption of skin lighteners. Gender & Society, 22(3), pp.281-302.
(9) Kpanake, L. & Mullet, E., 2011. Motives for skin bleaching among West Africans. Focus on skin care: Ethnic, whitening & tanning, pp.6-8.
(10) Ibid.; Glenn, E. N., 2008. Yearning for lightness: Transnational circuits in the marketing and consumption of skin lighteners. Gender & Society, 22(3), pp.281-302.
(11) Del Guidice, P. & Yves, P., 2002. The widespread use of skin lightening creams in Senegal: A persistent public health problem in West Africa. The International Society of Dermatology, 41, pp.69-72.
(12) Kpanake, L. & Mullet, E., 2011. Motives for skin bleaching among West Africans. Focus on Skin Care: Ethnic, whitening & tanning, pp.6-8.
(13) Ibid.
(14) De Souza, M.M., 2008. The concept of skin bleaching in Africa and its devastating health implications. Clinics in Dermatology, 26, pp.27-29.
(15) Ibid.
(16) Del Guidice, P. & Yves, P., 2002. The widespread use of skin lightening creams in Senegal: A persistent public health problem in west Africa. The International Society of Dermatology, 41, pp.69-72.
(17) Lewis, K. M. et al., 2011. Investigating motivations for women’s skin bleaching in Tanzania. Psychology of Women Quarterly, 35(29), pp.29-37.
(18) Ajose, F.O.A., 2005. Consequences of skin bleaching in Nigerian men and women. The International Society of Dermatology, 44, pp.41-43.; Kpanake, L. & Mullet, E., 2011. Motives for skin bleaching among West Africans. Focus on Skin Care: Ethnic, whitening & tanning, pp.6-8.; Lewis, K. M. et al., 2011. Investigating motivations for women’s skin bleaching in Tanzania. Psychology of Women Quarterly, 35(29), pp.29-37.; Traore, A. et al., 2005. Use of cutaneous depigmenting products by women in two towns in Bukina Faso: epidemiologic data, motivations, products and side-effects. International Journal of Dermatology, 44, pp.30-32.
(19) Lewis, K. M. et al., 2011. Investigating motivations for women’s skin bleaching in Tanzania. Psychology of Women Quarterly, 35(29), pp.29-37.
(20) Ibid.
(21) Mire, A., 2001. Skin-bleaching: Poison, beauty, power and the politics of the colour line. Resources for Feminist Research, 28(3).
(22) Glenn, E. N., 2008. Yearning for lightness: Transnational circuits in the marketing and consumption of skin lighteners. Gender & Society, 22(3), pp.281-302.
(23) Ibid.
(24) Mire, A., 2001. Skin-bleaching: Poison, beauty, power and the politics of the colour line. Resources for Feminist Research, 28(3).
(25) Ibid.
(26) Lewis, K. M. et al., 2011. Investigating motivations for women’s skin bleaching in Tanzania. Psychology of Women Quarterly, 35(29), pp.29-37.
(27) De Souza, M.M., 2008. The concept of skin bleaching in Africa and its devastating health implications. Clinics in Dermatology, 26, pp.27-29.
(28) Glenn, E. N., 2008. Yearning for lightness: Transnational circuits in the marketing and consumption of skin lighteners. Gender & Society, 22(3), pp.281-302.
(29) Ibid.
(30) Ibid.
(31) Ibid.
(32) Mire, A., 2001. Skin-bleaching: Poison, beauty, power and the politics of the colour line. Resources for Feminist Research, 28(3).
(33) Glenn, E. N., 2008. Yearning for lightness: Transnational circuits in the marketing and consumption of skin lighteners. Gender & Society, 22(3), pp.281-302.
(34) Baumann, S., 2008. The moral underpinnings of beauty: A meaning-based explanation for light and dark complexions in advertising. Poetics, 36, pp.2-23.
(35) Ibid.
(36) Ibid.
(37) Ibid.
(38) Ibid.
(39) Glenn, E. N., 2008. Yearning for lightness: Transnational circuits in the marketing and consumption of skin lighteners. Gender & Society, 22(3), pp.281-302.
(40) Ibid.
(41) Ibid.
(42) De Souza, M.M., 2008. The concept of skin bleaching in Africa and its devastating health implications. Clinics in Dermatology, 26, pp.27-29.
(43) Glenn, E. N., 2008. Yearning for lightness: Transnational circuits in the marketing and consumption of skin lighteners. Gender & Society, 22(3), pp.281-302.
(44) Mire, A., 2001. Skin-bleaching: Poison, beauty, power and the politics of the colour line. Resources for Feminist Research, 28(3).
(45) Glenn, E. N., 2008. Yearning for lightness: Transnational circuits in the marketing and consumption of skin lighteners. Gender & Society, 22(3), pp.281-302.
(46) De Souza, M.M., 2008. The concept of skin bleaching in Africa and its devastating health implications. Clinics in Dermatology, 26, pp.27-29.
(47) Mire, A., 2001. Skin-bleaching: Poison, beauty, power and the politics of the colour line. Resources for Feminist Research, 28(3).
(48) Baumann, S., 2008. The moral underpinnings of beauty: A meaning-based explanation for light and dark complexions in advertising. Poetics, 36, pp.2-23.
(49) Lewis, K. M. et al., 2011. Investigating motivations for women’s skin bleaching in Tanzania. Psychology of Women Quarterly, 35(29), pp.29-37.
(50) Glenn, E. N., 2008. Yearning for lightness: Transnational circuits in the marketing and consumption of skin lighteners. Gender & Society, 22(3), pp.281-302.
(51) Ibid.

Written by Nicola Hugo ⁽¹⁾