All for the love of lighter skin

Many Nigerian ladies and their male counterparts have become like the jealous stepmother who always asked her mirror when seeking assurance in her vain quest against Snow White: “Mirror, mirror on the wall, who is the fairest of us all?”

Nkiruka Obiwali is one of such persons. As soon as she awakes every morning, Nkiruka, an astute entrepreneur running a lucrative event management business and a busy schedule, starts her day quite early with a bath, followed with ‘getting ready for the day’ before the sun rises; and indeed, it is always a race between her and the sun.

Getting ready for the day means she has to apply various creams and lotions to different parts of her body. For instance, she has a cream for her body, another for her face, and a different one for her hands and feet. She diligently follows this routine because she is on a mission to produce a desired result, and that is to lighten her complexion.

Nkiruka, 38, is not alone in her quest to beat Michael Jackson, the late king of pop, in the department of skin bleaching. In Nigeria where she lives, there are several ladies and men as well who, not liking their natural complexions, seek chemical help from tubes and bottles.

This thirst for a lighter complexion has opened up a multimillion-dollar market in Nigeria alone, as several skin lightening products come into the country from different parts of the world and are consumed right-away by the huge appetite of Nigerians. They want to be called any colour but ’black’. In fact, they take umbrage if you refer to them as dark-skinned.

A day at some major markets in the country throws a pathetic light on this issue as some male traders seeking patronage would raise their voice to call a potential lady customer who is dark-skinned, ‘Blacky’, in such a derogatory manner that shows they have an issue with a lady being black or dark.

Rosabelle is an industrious lady who has a shop on a busy street somewhere in the heart of Ikeja. As early as 8am, the shop doors are wide open and through the slightly tinted glasses, one can see about a dozen ladies seated within.

Rosabelle is an expert at ‘mixing creams’. She would check your body type and ask you, “How fair do you want to get?” Then she’d go ahead to mix several things or liquids together in a small jar. Her concoction is said to be powerful and works wonders as you begin to see results in just a few days. Her price starts at N30,000. It is believed that those who want to alter their skin colours have the money to spend, and so it does not come cheap.

Wikipedia refers to it as ‘skin whitening’. According to the knowledge base website, “Skin whitening, skin lightening refer to the practice of using chemical substances in an attempt to lighten skin tone or provide an even skin complexion by reducing the melanin concentration in the skin. Several chemicals have been shown to be effective in skin whitening, while some have proven to be toxic or have questionable safety profiles, adding to the controversy surrounding their use and impacts on certain ethnic groups.”

Melanin is a broad term for a group of natural pigments found in most organisms. It is produced by the oxidation of the amino acid tyrosine, followed by polymerization. The pigment is produced in a specialized group of cells known as melanocytes. There are three basic types of melanin: eumelanin, pheomelanin, and neuromelanin. The most common is eumelanin, of which there are two types – brown eumelanin and black eumelanin.

In the skin, melanogenesis occurs after exposure to ultraviolet (UV) radiation, causing the skin to visibly tan. Melanin is an effective absorber of light; the pigment is able to dissipate over 99.9 percent of absorbed UV radiation. Because of this property, melanin is thought to protect skin cells from UVB radiation damage, reducing the risk of cancer. Furthermore, though exposure to UV radiation is associated with increased risk of malignant melanoma, a cancer of the melanocytes, studies have shown a lower incidence for skin cancer in individuals with more concentrated melanin, i.e., darker skin tone. Nonetheless, the relationship between skin pigmentation and photoprotection is still being clarified.

Growing up, people who tried changing their skin colour were referred to as “Unfortunate oyibo”; oyibo being the local parlance for a white foreigner. The process goes by a number of names: lightening, brightening, whitening, skin toning and any other word that catches our fancy, but the truth remains that bleaching by any other name is still bleaching.

In the 1980s, bleaching phenomenon was rampant, but it later took back stage because everyone’s attention was on Michael Jackson – who before everyone’s eyes transformed himself from a young, dark and handsome man to a white man with pointed nose and curly hair to boot. No one else was that daring to have acid baths or tamper with their features so boldly!

Then in the heat of Michael Jackson and his Nigeria counterparts’ bleaching spree, Fela released one of his hit tracks, ‘Yellow Fever’. Part of the lyrics goes thus: “Artificial cashew, you go get your double colour. You go yellow pass yellow, you go get moustache for face, you sef go think say you fine. Na lie, you nor fine at all, at all, na lie…Yellow fever, you dey bleach o, you dey bleach”.

It is not uncommon to see men and ladies with colour patches on their bodies, due to use of bleaching or toning creams. In fact, common features among those who patronise these bleaching products include black knuckles or hands, hard skin, visible blue veins, red, protruding stretch marks, moustache-like look above their lips, black lips, strange body odour, wounds/injuries that heal slowly, brown/black finger and toe nails, wrinkled skin and many more.

A report published by the World Health Organisation (WHO) sheds some light on this menace and tries to explain the active ingredients in most skin lightening products available in the market. One of such active ingredients is mercury, which is a common ingredient found in skin lightening soaps and creams, and also in other cosmetics.

Mercury salts inhibit the formation of melanin, resulting in lighter skin tone. In cosmetics, it exists in either organic or inorganic forms. Inorganic mercury (i.e., ammoniated mercury) is used in skin lightening soaps and creams. Organic mercury compound (thiomersal [ethyl mercury] and phenyl mercuric salts) are used as cosmetic preservatives in eye makeup cleansing products and mascara.

The amount or concentration of mercury in a product may be labelled on the packaging or in the ingredient list. Names to look for include mercury, Hg, mercuric iodine, mercurous chloride, ammoniated mercury, amide chloride of mercury, quicksilver, cinnabaris (mercury sulphide), hydragyri oxydum rubrum (mercury oxide), mercury iodine or poison; directions to avoid contact with silver, gold, rubber, aluminium and jewellery may also indicate the presence of mercury. However, companies selling products that contain mercury do not always list it as an ingredient.

The main adverse effect of the inorganic mercury contained in skin lightening soaps and creams is kidney damage. Mercury in skin lightening products may also cause skin rashes, skin discolouration and scarring, as well as a reduction in the skin’s resistance to bacterial and fungal infections. Other effects include anxiety, depression or psychosis and peripheral neuropathy.

Ladi Alakija, medical director, JLT Specialist Clinic & Skin Centre, was very vocal in his response when his professional opinion was sought, stating that he will never “recommend bleaching for anybody because the active composition in some, which is a chemical solution called hydroquinone, is carcinogenic – cancer forming. No dermatologist will advise it”.

A document made available to BDSUNDAY by Alakija shows that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on August 29, 2006 proposed a ban on over-the-counter sales of cosmetic products containing hydroquinone, a skin-bleaching (lightening) ingredient.

According to the FDA, approximately 65 companies sell over 200 different types of skin-lightening products containing hydroquinone in the U.S. Currently, products that contain up to 2 percent hydroquinone may be sold in the U.S. without a prescription, and prescription skin-lightening products may contain up to 4 percent hydroquinone. Examples of prescription products containing hydroquinone are Lustra, Tri-Luma, and EpiQuin Micro.

The reason cited for the proposed ban is that studies in rodents show “some evidence” that hydroquinone may act as a carcinogen or cancer-causing chemical, although its cancer-causing properties have yet to be proved in humans. Hydroquinone also has been linked with the medical condition known as ochronosis in which the skin becomes dark and thick. Dome-shaped yellowish spots and greyish-brown spots also are observed in ochronosis among black women and men in South Africa, Britain, and the U.S. Ochronosis has been observed in conjunction with hydroquinone use even in persons who have used hydroquinone-containing cosmetics for a short time. Some studies also report abnormal function of the adrenal glands and high levels of mercury in people who have used hydroquinone-containing cosmetics. For these reasons, hydroquinone has already been banned in Japan, the European Union, and Australia.

One study indicated a large proportion of nephrotic syndrome among African women using ammoniated mercuric chloride- containing skin lightening creams for periods ranging from a month to three years. Over three quarters of the women who stopped using the creams went into remission.

Mercury in soaps, creams and other cosmetic products is eventually discharged into wastewater. The mercury then enters the environment, where it becomes methylated and enters the food chain as the highly toxic methylmecury in fish. Pregnant women who consume fish containing methylmercury transfer the mercury to their foetuses, which can later result in neurodevelopmental deficits in the children. Exposure to inorganic mercury can be quantified through measurements in blood and urine.

In an article in a past edition of Marie Claire by Janet Mock, she recounts how one 1997 ABC TV musical movie of Rogers and Hammerstein’s Cinderella, starring Brandy, with Whitney Houston as the fairy godmother and Whoopi Goldberg as the prince’s mom, deeply influenced her and continued to do so.

“Brandy’s fairy-tale, glass-slipper princess leaped over racial hurdles. Cinderella was usually portrayed by Disney as Blonde, with twinkling blue eyes and a fair complexion. With her braids and brown skin, Brandy was the furthest from classic Disney fantasies- but closest to my reality,” Mock writes.

“Growing up in front of the television and being bombarded by images of girls who did not look like me, I was changed by the sight of this racially diverse cast. Popular culture is most powerful when it offers us a vision of how society should look- or at least reproduces our reality.”

Author Zadie Smith has spoken about the idea of racial neutrality when it comes to characters in literature – the notion that because literary characters have been overwhelmingly white, readers of all colours have been trained to see white people as the standard, the norm, making whiteness more central, humane, and full than characters of colour, who are largely read with an “other “or “niche” focus.

Fast-forward to 2014 till date. As the Nigerian entertainment industry takes centre stage and internet proliferation increases, more Nigerians are of the opinion that dark skin is not appealing, that it is dull and ‘old school’. Westernisation has taken over most of our thinking and now affects a lot of things.

In 2015, a skin-lightening product took the internet by storm. It was called Whitenicious cream for Dark Spot Removal, touted to be a moisturising cream enriched from exquisite and powerful ingredients that also removes dark spots (acne, hyper pigmentation, etc). The product is said to contain Vitamins C and E and provides an SPF of 15 to nourish and redefine skin, lighten dark spots and smooth pores and formulated for sensitive skin, but nothing has been heard about it from the appropriate quarters of National Agency for Food, Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC) or Standard Organisation of Nigeria (SON) on its purported claims and usage

The silence of these organisations is such that the markets are flooded with skin-lightening creams, lotions, soaps and body wash, among other cosmetics with such harmful active ingredients.

According to the WHO report, 77 percent of women in Nigeria use these skin-lightening products, which is statistically the world’s highest in percentage terms.

Easy access to these products and the sometimes overly cheap prices put them within the reach of anybody despite their potential threat to the society, considering the harm they cause. Increased public awareness is required regarding the types of products and specific products containing mercury or hydroquinone as well as associated risks to exposure/usage.

Hydroquinone products are popular for their skin-lightening properties in Asian and African cosmetics markets. In the U.S., they also are marketed for reducing age spots and blemishes. Any skin-lightening products containing hydroquinone would be considered new drugs, according to the proposed FDA regulations. The products would require FDA approval before being sold to the public and would only be available with a doctor’s prescription.

This desire to change one’s skin complexion has a deeper connotation than wanting to look beautiful; it definitely has something to do with self-esteem and inferiority complex.

Kudos to House of Tara, Maybelline, Black Opal and some others who are promoting African beauty and heritage through their line of sophisticated beauty products and cosmetics specially for ladies of colour. Their consideration is going a long way to show ladies that despite their skin colour, with the right shade, colour and blend of makeup, one can look gorgeous and appealing without tampering with their natural skin tone.

Even the black-brewed liquid Guinness stout drink believes “Black is beautiful”. So, hey! Who can say otherwise about you?

Mabel Dimma