Today, the concept of beauty has seen women going to great lengths in order to enhance their looks. Women take great risks that include taking harmful substances and/or going to jail for smuggling and using illegal substances. Many societies of colour, including Black African societies believe that lighter skin is synonymous with beauty and women have been pressured to use substances that include smuggled harmful skin lightening creams and drugs.
This harmful notion of beauty, according to experts, has dogged generation with disastrous consequences.
Speaking on Identities/Umhlobo/Zvatiri television show Rejoice Makawa, said, “The issue of skin bleaching has always been there even the generation beyond my age.” She said terms such as “yellow bone” with reference to light-skinned women have been the in thing and women are pressured into bleaching their skins to become “beautiful”.
In the old days, Makawa noted that skin-lightening creams such as Ambi were in vogue. Young women, under pressure from society, peers and lovers, go to great lengths to look “beautiful” and the number of women using harmful bleaching substances is rising by the day. However, it is difficult to have official statistics because most of the substances used are illegal and their purchase and use is done in secret.
Because of technology, the products of skin lighting and bleaching are changing and are becoming more refined. “Bleaching is a choice and that choice comes from different reasons but usually it stems from insecurities,” said Mellissa, a female student at a local university.
She said some girls tended to bleach as a way to impress and secure their relationships with their boyfriends, for instance if the boyfriend cheats with a light skinned girl, the competitor tended to bleach her skin in order to impress the opposite sex.
She said some of the people tended to bleach due to lack of contentment with who they are. “It starts by defining who you are before you turn to bleaching,” She said.
The phenomena of girls feeling inferior has a great impact to the extent that some believe that their boyfriends cheat because of their deficiencies especially in terms of physical appearance so in order to please the men they go a long way in making themselves look ‘beautiful’.
Rejoice said, “Women have been socialized to believe that their role is to please men and if the men go astray it is their responsibility to woo them back [1] and we are living in the world where the rules of engagement are determined by the men.”
Mellissa said that as a young person one should have values. What one values most guides in making decisions. A woman should be contended with the colour of her skin and be proud of it, even if her partner cheats with a light skinned one there is no need for bleaching in order to fight “competition”, she said.
She said young women needed to be empowered enough for them to determine who they are and to have confidence that they can do better things other than trying to please men by bleaching their skins.
Rejoice counselled that the girls should not allow the world to determine who they are and what they should do with their skin. The girls should be empowered in order to understand that beauty is not determined by how light one’s skin is. Many factors determine the beauty of a person.
Most women lighten their skin using harmful substances unaware of the consequences. Lack of knowledge endangers uninformed decisions that have bad results for most skin-bleaching women.
Empowerment is the key so that women do not mistake bleached skin for beauty. It was also noted during the discussion that, men are increasingly bleaching their skin even though they are still few.
By Letwin A. Mazarura
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