I reblogged this short film ‘Yellow Fever‘ by Ng’endo Mukii on the Afroklectic tumblr some time ago from Dynamic Africa. It came up again on my tumblr feed and I thought it would be a good to tackle into it. It is a powerful short film about the dirty word…… ‘bleaching‘.
We don’t talk about it, but we all know people who do it. I know people of all ages who do it. Males and Females. Family members. Non-Africans do it. China and India have advertisements promoting bleaching creams. I see Indians come in their numbers into the salon I frequently go to, to purchase bleaching creams. I have friends who do it and I always wonder why.
I always jokingly say to Sefakor that the day a scientist/researcher finds that Coco Butter Even Sheen is a bleaching lotion, that is the day someone can call me a bleacher!
I had a bleaching experience many years ago and this experience scarred me and made very cautious of what I put on my skin. When I was between the ages of 10 and 12, I had a pimple invasion on my face and weird skin. I had tried a Sorbolene cream, Clearasil, Tea tree oil, Palmer’s coco butter, antiseptic creams and so forth to clear it but nothing seemed to work. At that time, my Aunty used to send us hair care products from America since it was scarce and too expensive in Sydney. You would request one thing from my Aunty and she could send it in bulk or 4 different versions just because it was cheap. We always had an abundant amount of perming creams, extensions, sneakers and body lotions because of her.
One day we received a package from her with bottles of a lotion by the name of Peau Claire. The description was in French, we couldn’t read it, but my Mum thought I should give it a try since nothing was clearing up my pimples. I started using it and by day two or three my pimples were miraculously disappearing without scars.
I used it for a month or two, maybe a bit more. I don’t remember. One day I went to a salon and a lady I knew asked me what I was using on my face. She noticed that there was something different about my face. I told her that I was using Peau Claire. Straight away she told me to stop using it. She said it was a bleaching cream and wasn’t not good for me. She then added that I had beautiful skin and didn’t need to ruin it. She then started to point out the changes of my face. I looked in the mirror and noticed that my tone was uneven. Around my eyes seemed really dark as well as my forehead and my checks were quite light with lighter spots. I was oblivious to these changes until she pointed it out.
Funnily enough the lady was (and still is) a religious bleacher, so I didn’t understand why I had to stop and she didn’t have to. She was very adamant about me not using the cream. At the time, my Mum wasn’t around, but the moment Mum came into our presence she reinforced her message. My Mum acknowledged and we went home and threw out every bottle we had. I was a bit upset because I just wanted all my pimples to go away, but I also remember thinking I didn’t want my knuckles or my feet to be oddly dark in comparison to the rest of my body like the lady. We told my Aunty to stop the mass order we made for the lotion days earlier. She felt bad because she had originally bought the lotion because it was the cheapest in the store.
I used a few other lotions after that and made sure they had no bleaching agents and eventually started using Coco Butter Even Sheen. I have been using that ever since. It took years for my skin to recover, in particular my face. From photos back then to now, you can tell that there has been a change. It actually looks like I have become few tones lighter, however that transition was my skin finding its correct tone after the use of Peau Claire and also the effects of puberty.
I have had a number of people tell me that I am a bleaching. Not even ask me if I am bleaching, but tell me. More like declare that I am a bleacher. About 90% of those people who declare, are bleachers themselves. I laugh at their statements. Sometimes I think they say it because they know I am so open and will open up about my supposed bleaching regiment and then we could swap notes or something. I tell them, ‘Trust me, if I was a bleacher, you would know because I wouldn’t even do it properly. As for me and my skin it’s Coco Butter Even Sheen all the way’.
When I was in my senior year in high school and had an argument with my English teacher over bleaching. She said black people do it because they want to be white. I told her that there is no way a whole black race wanted to be like her. I told her for sure there are people who wanted to be white, but that was not the underlying reason for people bleaching. We went around in circles, neither of us had an answer to the issue. It was too big for us to delve into.
The idea of bleaching baffles me. It always will. I wonder why all the time. I have watched documentaries, interviews like the one with South African singer Mshoza who prides on bleaching, read articles and books and still don’t understand why people would want to do that to themselves. This short film by Yellow Fever by Ng’endo Mukii is just over a minute long, but verbally and visually sums up how deep the issue of bleaching is.