Colourism as Capital: Skin Bleaching in the 21st Century
Skin bleaching is a thriving, multi-billion-dollar industry selling the notion that lighter skin is worth chasing—no matter the cost. Also known as skin “whitening” or “lightening,” the practice remains widespread through the supply and demand for products like creams, soaps, and serums designed to lessen melanin production, particularly across once-colonized African, Asian, and Caribbean states. Around the world, fairer complexions are still heavily associated with wealth, beauty, intelligence, and higher social status, rooted “in European beauty standards from histories of slavery, colonialism, and colo[u]rism.” Women—in particular women of colour—are impacted by these beauty standards the hardest.
Skin bleaching became popular in many African countries in the 1950s and is still a common practice—27.1 per cent of individuals living in Africa are found to use skin lightening products. Nigeria has the highest percentage of women using skin lightening products in Africa, but also globally, with studies reporting approximately 77 per cent of Nigerian women using such products. Other African countries with high rates of women using skin bleaching products include Senegal (60 per cent), Mali (50 per cent), and Ghana (30 per cent). In these numbers, we see widespread use of skin bleaching products throughout the African continent, showcasing what may be considered a lasting colonial legacy of the Europeans, post-African independence. This desire for lighter skin is demonstrated by the global skin whitening market, estimated to be $8.8 billion USD in 2022 and projected to grow to $15.7 billion USD by 2030.
Women of colour account for approximately 80 per cent of sales for skin-lightening products worldwide, demonstrating the practice to be an issue of both race and gender. Though this statistic seems overwhelmingly large, it is less shocking once the media’s long-standing portrayal of lighter-skinned women as more attractive, intelligent, and socially desirable is considered. Companies selling skin whitening products have taken the same approach. This favouring of lighter skin over darker skin—an act known as colourism—maintains a core role in how beauty is constructed and marketed, and the “[global] marketplace is no less interested in this social anomaly, selling whiteness as a preferred state and belittling darker-toned people by inference.” Through the promise of youthful glows and newfound attractiveness, these products are marketed to target women, relying on the perpetuated idea that a woman’s appearance, particularly the lightness of her skin, determines her social and economic worth. Women’s values have historically been linked to appearance and attractiveness much more than men’s, and across racial groups in both the global north and south, proximity to whiteness continues to define today’s conventional beauty standards.
The digital reinforcement of Eurocentric beauty ideals further amplifies the pressure on women of colour to achieve lighter skin. A 2021 report from the MIT Technology Review explores the spreading of “digital colourism” and how commonly used photo-editing tools and filters on apps such as Snapchat and Instagram lighten skin tones and alter facial features, subtly (though not always) reinforcing Eurocentric beauty standards in people’s everyday lives. These digital tools are particularly popular among younger women, increasing the pressure to conform to beauty ideals shaped by colonial, racial, and gendered histories.
However, the normalization of these standards is not met without resistance. Companies profiting from these Eurocentric ideals have increasingly faced scrutiny, with a notable example being the skin and body care brand Nivea in 2017. The company faced heavy social media backlash after running an ad for its “Natural Fairness” cream in West Africa, where the advertisement showcased a Black woman applying the cream with the slogan “visibly lightens.” The campaign was subsequently criticized for promoting harmful stereotypes and reinforcing the idea that dark skin is undesirable, sparking calls from social media users to boycott the brand. The company took down the original advertisement to replace it with one not marketing the products’ “lightning” effects, instead claiming the product enhances “natural glow.”
Rather than removing products promoting skin whitening, many skin and body care brands have only changed the term used to describe their product to continue selling the same products. L’Oréal, for instance, continues to sell creams and products formulated for skin whitening effects, even though it removed the term “whitening” from its packaging in 2020. The company still sells products containing skin lightening agents such as phenylethyl resorcinol, and their discontinued “White Perfect Night Cream” shares almost identical ingredients to their now-advertised “Aura Perfect Night Cream.”
There are also many brands that have not changed the descriptions or marketing of their skin whitening products, nor have they stopped selling them. To illustrate with an example local to Canada, the Canadian-based brand YouLookLight explicitly markets a wide range of “skin whitening,” “lightening,” and “bleaching” products from global manufacturers on its website.
Despite its popularity, skin bleaching is not safe. Tests of skin lightening products have shown some of them to contain dangerous levels of mercury, where exposure to such can lead to serious health problems like kidney failure, neurological damage (i.e. memory loss, paralysis), gastrointestinal issues, birth defects, and even death in the most serious cases. Hydroquinone is a common ingredient used in skin whitening products, but this chemical agent has been seen to result in abnormal skin pigmentation, cysts, and trimethylaminuria—a rare genetic disorder that causes an intense and fishy body odour.
Various African countries have legislated bans against the manufacturing, importing, and selling of certain skin bleaching products, but the products remain readily available due to issues of weak enforcement. The University of Cape Town (UCT) conducted a study in 2015 investigating the active ingredients and countries of origin of popular skin lightening products in Cape Town, South Africa, and the study found that of the 29 products tested, 75.9 per cent contained banned or illegal ingredients. Despite the EU having a ban on all skin lightening products, over a third of the products tested originated from Europe. This study from UCT highly correlates with an earlier study out of Lafayette College, which discovered that the skin bleaching products found in Africa commonly contain agents that are banned in the European countries where they were manufactured, making Africa something of a “proverbial dumping ground yet a thriving market” for products deemed too dangerous for the European population. These studies demonstrate how regulatory loopholes and inadequate enforcement expose African consumers to harmful products deemed unfit elsewhere.
Whether observed through a micro or macro lens, skin bleaching is dangerous. In perpetuating racial inequalities, further entrenching gendered narratives, and posing health risks to individual users, the practice reflects and reinforces deeply rooted systems of oppression. The persistence of skin bleaching in female communities of colour demonstrates a global system that continues to favour proximity to whiteness, and an industry that continues to profit from the notion that lighter skin is more valuable.
In today’s world, beauty standards cannot be understood without knowing the colonial hierarchies and racial biases which uphold them. Regulatory measures and branding changes will remain surface-level solutions until the globally entrenched colonial preference for “whiteness” is openly challenged.
Edited by Hannah Lalonde
Featured image: “Instant Brown Brighten Cream Label” distributed by Duke University Libraries Exhibits is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 3.0.
