By Nkiru Odinkemelu

Bleaching the skin might appear pretty at inception but the end result is usually horrific and the damages irreparable, said Dr. Funmi Ajose, Associate Professor of Medicine, Lagos State University College of Medicine (LASUCOM).

Bleaching according to experts is a cosmetic procedure that aims to lighten dark areas of skin or achieve a generally paler skin tone.

It is usually used to improve the appearance of blemishes such as birthmarks and dark patches. Skin-lightening procedures work by reducing the concentration or production of melanin in the skin. Melanin is the pigment that gives skin its colour and helps protect it from the sun.

Of recent, bleaching of the skin is gradually becoming a common practise among women and girls of dark skin. This according to Ajose may not be unconnected with the belief that lighter skinned women are seen as more beautiful and preferred among men.

Aside this belief, the expert also has it that media houses, especiallly the broadcast are indirectly playing a major role in colonising the heart of young vulnerable girls to start engaging in the act by always projecting light skinned women as more beautiful on their screen.

This she argued would force dark vulnerable girls to begin to see their skin colour as an obstacle and as a result, desiring to be like the person they see on their screen.

“It is becoming a pandemic in this country, everybody wants to be lighter and why do we want to be lighter? Because men prefer light women to dark ones and also the media houses put on television, light skinned women and am advocating that media houses will discourage bleaching by projecting dark coloured women on their screen.

“If you project dark coloured women, the young impressionable girls, who are coming up, who want to be like that person they are seeing on their television will know that they don’t have to change their skin colour to get there but if the person they are seeing on their television is all white and bleached, they will think that oh, this is what I need to do to get there.”
She stressed that the media have a major role to play in disabusing the mind of those young girls.

“So the media can actually help us by de-emphasizing bleaching. I will encourage that anybody that has obviously engaged in bleaching should not be encouraged on national television; that is what the media can do for us.”

Apart from just wanting to be like the person they see on the screen, she explained that another common reason women and girls bleach is as a result of imperfection in skin colour.

She affirmed that majority of them did not just start by having the mindset of bleaching at the onset which explains why they start with uneven skin tone, saying they just want to even out their tone.

Bleaching is addictive

The doctor warned that bleaching generally is dangerous, just as she cautioned those already in the act to desist from it.
“Bleaching is dangerous, if I show you the photograph of people that visit my clinic with the consequence of bleaching, it is horrific. But unfortunately, the earlier manifestation or outcome of bleaching looks good and girls want to look good but within a few months, the story changes because the skin renews its cell every three weeks.  So, if you bleach today, by three weeks time, your skin will become normal, so, you have to keep bleaching to sustain that colour and that is when bleaching becomes addictive because people are seeing you being light, you don’t want them to see you turning black again, so, you keep doing it until the skin damages and once bleaching damages the skin, it becomes irreversible.”

Causes of uneven skin tone
Ajose said,“Uneven skin tone occurs because we are living in tropical environment where the sun interacts with some of the food that we eat and some of the drugs that we take could cause some pigmentation to protect our skin..

“The commonest of these drugs are anti malaria and you can imagine the number of women that take anti-malarials, especially sulphur containing anti-malarias. When you take sulphur containing drugs – anti hypertensives, anti malarials and anti diabetics, these interact with the sun and you can have irregular skin tone.

“The other major drug is contraceptive pills, which young girls take. When you take contraceptive pills, it also interacts with the sun and give you some pigmentary changes on your skin; so women should understand that when they are taking contraceptive pills or anti malarials, they should avoid excessive sun exposure. That way, they could minimise patchy pigmentation on their skin, the reason that so many of them use bleaching skin.”

Consequences of Bleaching
The expert said majority of people who damage their skin from bleaching end up being depressed. “So, it is important to help disseminate the information that the after effect of bleaching is depression. A lot of women who have damaged their skin through bleaching end up perpetually depressed because they cannot go out, they cannot undress in front of people, their husbands have left them, even their children feel embarrassed by what they see on their skin and fortunately, it is not limited to women, men are also doing it.
The expert however debunked the report on 70 per cent of Nigerian women being involved in bleaching, calling it a fallacy. “The paper being flaunted all over was a study conducted among market women of a particular market, so, cannot be generalised. The World Health Organisation (WHO) that did that study specifically said that but unfortunately, somebody just grabbed the 70 percent and ran away with it. That 70 per cent is not referred to Nigeria as a country. It was for a particular group of market women. So, it is like 70 per cent of the market women sampled that were bleaching.

Bleaching children’s skin
On women who bleach their children, the doctor labelled the act a form of child abuse.
“It is crazy. It is a form of child abuse. Most African children are born with what we call Mongolian spot. These Mongolian spots are patches on their buttocks and it fades over time. But some crazy women just decide to bleach the baby skin because they feel that those Mongolian spot disfigure their children, it is really crazy and it is important that you help us to bring this out that mothers should not bleach their babies who have Mongolian spots because  the black spots will eventually disappear overtime.”