Beasts of No Nation actress Ama K Abebrese launched a public health campaign called Love Your Natural Skin Tone.
Colorism, or discrimination on the basis of skin tone and complexion, is a pervasive scourge bubbling under the surface of daily life and affecting the lived experiences of black and brown women worldwide. Routine interactions, dating prospects, and employment are often determined by the shade of our skin. Where racism and sexism collide, light is too often considered right.
The effects of normalized white supremacy have long created global standards of beauty that frequently manifest in the form of skin-bleaching, a practice common across much of the world. Women from Africa to Asia resort to using damaging creams, pills, and chemicals to lighten their skin, risking their lives for impossible aesthetic ideals. Ghanaian-British actress Ama K Abebrese, best known for her role inCary Fukunaga’s Beasts of No Nation, has spent the past couple of years spearheading a large-scale public effort to counteract the practice of skin-bleaching in Ghana. We spoke with her about the epidemic of skin-bleaching in her home country and the success of her Love Your Natural Skin Tone campaign.
AMA K. ABEBRESE: I spent the majority of my life in London. London is pretty multicultural. So most of the [colorism] I had seen was vanity or preference. It was no big deal. And then when I moved to Ghana about six years ago, I was shocked. There are billboards in many places—I couldn’t even imagine anybody being allowed to put up a billboard like this in the U.S. or the U.K. Some of them will say “perfect white” or “get the perfect white skin.” You go to the markets and you see the worst cases of skin-bleaching. I mean, older women who’ve bleached for years and they now have a skin disorder [called] ochronosis. There’s a local name for it, which is nenso eben. I think the translation is something like “so what do you expect?” or “that’s what you get” because their faces have black and green patches. And you see this everywhere. You can go to a hospital and see the nurses have bleached; you go to banks, you see it. I mean pretty much all facets of society. It’s literally everywhere. And I was like, what the hell is going on? So the more I was having conversations with people about it, I realized that people talk behind people’s backs, like “Oh, this one, she’s a bleacher” or “This one, he’s bleached.” And it’s a bit of a big joke. But it was a conversation most people would not have on a platform, because probably almost every single person has a family member that bleaches.
People use very dangerous mixtures and concoctions with high levels of hydroquinone. They’re not going to a proper dermatologist, they just walk into any store. There’s even stories of people using mixtures where they use hair relaxer cream for fast action. And one of the worst ones I’ve heard is that one of the mixtures includes cement. They will tell you all sorts of things, and you realize there’s a level of shame for those that do it. It’s not something that people are out and proud about. They’ll call it other things, like, “Oh it’s not bleaching, I’m just toning.” That’s my favorite one. I was just baffled. I would look around me and see it everywhere. When I started talking to people about it, they were like, “Oh yeah, great, something should be done about it.” However, nobody was [doing anything].
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Sometimes I feel like we’re fighting a losing battle. I don’t know how much damage has been done to us. But to be honest, and this is just me, I’m not speaking for anybody, but I do think there are some Africans who clearly do not like dark skin. I think my own feeling about it is that a lot of black people hate blackness, they hate the blackness of their skin. We have certain notions of the ideal level of blackness. It should be a bit more caramel-y.
Colonization obviously is a major factor. I’m no historian or anything, but if we look at what the white man’s presence meant—let me just stick to Ghana—a lot of people saw them as saviors. Colonization played a key role in how Africans saw themselves. This March will be the 59th year since Ghana got independence from Britain. Soon it will be 60 years. 60 is not that old. So I think a lot of the ideals that were left of “white is right” or “lighter is better”—a lot of those things are still certainly within the psyche of a lot of people, and they’ve passed it on to their children and their grandchildren. There’s a term of endearment: one of the most beautiful levels of affection you can call someone is mibruni, which literally translates to “my white person.” So it goes back. It’s part of the language and it’s been around for a while.
And with mainstream media, remember, we’re a global village. Whoever’s trending in America, whoever is the hottest artist in America, chances are they are the hottest artist in most other countries in the world. And I’ve seen this in this part of Africa, people love the same women that are highlighted in popular black culture, so Beyoncé, the Rihannas, and so forth. You get it here as well. People equate that same level of idealistic beauty, that this is the ideal black woman. Most people don’t want to admit it. But black people have placed a level of status, especially in Africa, on skin color, and it’s sad. But I think the entertainment industry is only a portion of the problem.
Credit: thefader.com
How One Ghanaian Actress Is Fighting The Skin-Bleaching Epidemic In Her Home Country
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