Vybz Kartel Isn't The Only One With A Skin Bleaching Issue!

Vybz Kartel is a hardcore gangster style Jamaican DJ. So, I was surprised to learn that he wants to be lighter. He defended the use of skin bleach by pointing out that no one makes a fuss when a person seeks darker skin by getting a tan. Mr. Kartel says that he has the right to alter the color of his skin.

Unfortunately, this is a world-wide epidemic. Jamaica is in the spotlight as of late. But, the desire to have the fairest skin of all has been happening in Asia, Africa, Europe,etc... I wish that were not the case in the 21st century. I love my dark,velvety skin. You couldn't pay me to lighten my skin.

Here's more on this topic from The New Black Magazine:

"Skin-whitening or skin-bleaching is a practice whereby women - and some men - use various forms of skin-whitening products in order to make their skin appear as white as possible.

As an anti-aging therapy, skin-whitening promises to "restore" as well as to"transform" the aging skins of women and make them smooth, wrinkle-free-younger-looking. In this context, the natural aging process is systematically framed as a pathological condition which must be interrupted through measures such as "elective surgery" and or by bleaching out the signs of aging such as "age spots."

In this way, in the case of white women, skin-whitening is presented as a legitimate intervention designed to 'cure' and mitigate the disease of aging. Skin-whitening as a biomedical intervention is predicated on the pathologization of the natural aging processes in all women, white women in particular.

At least in the United States, racially white eastern and southern European women have used skin-whitening in order to appear as 'white' as their 'Anglo-Saxon' "native" white sisters. In the United States, women of colour also have practiced skin-whitening.

Many of the early skin-bleaching commodities such as Nodinalina skin bleaching cream, a product which has been in the US market since 1889, contained 10 per cent ammoniated mercury. Mercury is a highly toxic agent with serious health implications. According to Kathy Peiss , in 1930, a single survey found advertising for 232 different brand names of skin-bleaching creams promoted in mainstream magazines to mainly white women consumers in the United States.

If dark-skinned eastern and southern Europeans can "pass" for white with a little help from skin-bleaching creams, those with sufficiently light skin tones but who are legally categorized as racially black by their invisible " one drop" of "black blood", could also "pass" for white as well. The "appearance of whiteness" is the key to accessing the exclusive cultural and economic privileges whiteness accrues.

The fear of the infiltration of "invisible' blackness has fuelled both the marketing strategies of industry and the anxieties of white women that they may not appear "white enough". (END OF EXCERPT) Read the rest here.