It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas and, judging by some disturbing adverts I've seen recently, some folk are hoping Santa delivers an unconventional gift in their stockings. New skin. New, whiter skin.Flicking through the T&T Guardian my colleague stopped at a full page advert for a woman's "beauty product." At first glance it appeared innocent, like an ad for moisturiser. It employed the usual colour scheme marketeers aim at women (pink).Pale-skinned, Indian Bollywood star, Sonakshi Sinha, gazes at the camera with the caption, "Fem bleach is my monthly beauty investment... What about you?"The cr�me bleach–strange how the marketeers feel bleach is an appealling name, a product usually used to clean toilets–comes in different shades of skin bleaching severity. "Golden glow" (for that expensive look?) "Wheatish to dark" (for the agricultural worker?) "Fair" (as opposed to unfair) and "Herbal" (for a legal high.)It reminded me of a picture I took in Ghana whilst sitting in Cape Coast waiting for a bus to Kumasi. I got talking to some of the locals. A girl named Patience with beautiful dark, black skin was sitting on the back of a tro-tro taxi and behind her a giant billboard showed a light, brown-skinned woman rubbing whitening cream into her skin smiling, satisfied, at the viewer. In my mind, the picture I took is an advert for not bleaching your skin.
All over Africa there are other adverts for not bleaching your skin–people permanently scarred and discoloured with patches of white blobs and streaks on their skin where they have killed their natural pigment by leaving the product on too long or using cheap products.What disturbs me about skin whitening is that, in an era when the racism of the past has subsided, black and Indian people are now voluntarily choosing to be racist to themselves! For that's what it is, an admission of racial self-loathing.Perhaps we shouldn't blame the individual entirely. In this day and age, we are highly susceptible to marketing messages and celeb culture. Vybz Kartel and Michael Jackson haven't helped the "black is beautiful" message. But why do we even need a message? It should be patently obvious by now that all colours of human beings are beautiful. So, why is the Aryan or European look so revered?When I sunbathe in Tobago I'm trying to get darker. Black people on the beach, cowering in the shade, for fear of getting (what they call) "shiny", say to me, "but you're such a nice colour, why do you want to get darker?" They labour under the misapprehension that lighter (whiter) is more attractive. And that darker (blacker) is less attractive.
Ironically, in Europe beauty treatments involve becoming darker! Sunbeds have even been invented for that purpose when the sun retreats for the winter."Look what a lovely colour you are," white people in England say to darker people, "I wish I was that colour." It's amazing that despite fashion houses using porcelain white models–Prada recently booked their first black model in 19 years–white people don't actually like their paleness. Some are even ashamed of it, just as some black people are ashamed of their blackness and Indians of their brownness. Walking around Port-of-Spain, people (more often women than men) can be seen under parasols, hiding from the atrocities the sun may inflict upon their skin.Meanwhile, white Brits apply browny/orange fake tan. It makes them feel better about themselves to be a shade darker.While there is an element of body dysmorphia about it one certainly cannot ignore the legacy of racism. At a primary school I attended in the 80s, an elderly schoolmistress once told a story that included some black characters. Describing these black people's skin she said, "But they were a nice colour, not a dark black colour like some people in Africa." My brother and I, at the age of four and five, knew this was wrong and told our mother, who told our father, who went to the school to explain to the teacher the error of her ways.
Indian Trinis use the word "clear" to mean light (i.e. pretty). An extension of the horrific racism of colonialism, that saw dark-skinned people as mud people. Not human. And that darkness was also compounded in their muddy souls.As I sit writing this column my editor has placed the Express on my desk turned to an advert for Enami's latest product, Fair and Handsome (presumably targeted at men who feel dark and ugly?) Apparently it's "the world's no.1 fairness cream for men."If you haven't done your Christmas shopping yet, I'm sure the man in your life would love this.And for the women, there's a new product range–the Clean and Dry Intimate Wash, made in India– specially formulated to lighten your brown vagina.Come on ladies, sing along now...All I want for Christmas is a bleached vagina.
