The colour divide
Black was beautiful in the 60s. What about now?
The Ministry of Health recently banned smoking in public places, even in residential areas. I believe it's time somebody regulated another area of public nuisance in the residential domain. Television commercials. And one genre in particular, the kind that promises to 'restore the vibrant colour of youth.'
One commercial suggests that one way to brighten up your day is to lighten up your skin.
Another claims that a certain skinbleaching product has now been infused with Ayurvedic herbs, as if to say that ancient Indian medicine somehow places a stamp of approval on light as opposed to dark skin. As far as I know, the enlightenment sought by Asian gurus was a process of the mind not the pigment.
Nevertheless, if we take our cue from the blatant advertisement of skin-bleaching products on the local market, the reality that we live in a society that places a premium on light skin is glaring. Never mind that in 2001, the Kenya Bureau of Standards announced a product ban that outlawed the sale of cosmetics with a bleaching.
The cosmetics contained mercury, hydroquinone, oxidising agents or hormonal preparations and substances which were found to cause damage to the mouth, kidney, liver and even the brain. Prolonged use could lead to death. However, a cursory glance at several supermarket shelves in the city revealed that most of the products are back on sale.
A few new members have also joined the flock. The business is back with a bang. Not surprising, given that it is a multi-billion dollar industry that crosses continental divides. The market for skin lightening agents has persisted locally. "You have to hold back the years," said one woman when I asked her why she uses a skin lightener, "when I was young I didn't use any cream apart from Vaseline and people would comment about how smooth and brown I was.
Nowadays, I need to use something to even out my skin." Here 'even out' is clearly a euphemism for 'bleach', as is the word 'fair' when used by skin cream manufacturers. But from a woman who looks at light skin as a barrier to the ageing process, to a young girl who believes it's a mark of beauty despite her chocolate brown good looks, 16-year-old Stella Mugendi is fully subscribed to the conventional standard of beauty, which dictates that light skin is prettier. "Guys don't notice you if you're dark, even if you're pretty," she says, "if I could make my skin lighter, I would." And with some skin bleaching products retailing at as little as Sh10, she probably can. In fact, at that price, Stella is well within the group being targeted by the local industry.
To further illuminate this near obsession with light skin, are the comments from a former model who explains, "Men started looking at me from a very early age because my skin is very light" (she's a half caste). But there are some who disagree with the light, lighter, lightest theory. Frida Maua, a friend, has this to say; "People who are mesmerised by the light women do not ever look beyond the colour.
Often you'll see light skin from afar and think she's beautiful but when she gets closer she'll look like your ordinary next-door girl. Lauryn Kazai says, "Imagine such a woman with dark skin and you'll know whether she's pretty or not." I've been guilty of similar sentiments myself, and so have many women of the darker skinned variety.
Like closet romantics who masquerade as feminists, they are "black is beautiful" activists but who secretly wouldn't mind being a few shades lighter. As self-denigrating as that sounds, it's no wonder that many of us darker sisters fantasise about being 'yellow yellow' (the common description of the very light-skinned woman).
Here's why behind every aspiring yellow yellow there's a man who wants to see the light. According to Isaac Odida, a young man just starting out in the hospitality industry, "I find light-skinned girls more attractive and I'm not the only one. They definitely get more attention from the guys." Isaac's perspective suggests that light-skinned girls are some sort of prize, a mark of achievement for a man.
You could draw a parallel with those celebrity athletes in the sports world who've made the money, gotten the fame and married the leggy blonde with the ample bosom. Steven Njoroge, a thirty-something businessman, puts in his two cents worth: "Light skin is for play, dark skin is for life, besides I'm light myself, why would I want to settle down with a light-skinned woman?" As if it were not bad enough to objectify women, it now seems that light-skinned girls have been singled out as a sub-species.
What comes out here is that we might all be Barbie dolls in the male play pen, but the lighter ones get to go out and get played first. For Ken Shipiri, a man on the darker side of the colour spectrum, "Light women are prettier and they look better in make-up... I'm dark myself, so I prefer light-skinned women." Ken believes that if dark women bleached their skin, they would look more beautiful.
However, some men don't bother to dress their preference for light skin in the garment of philosophy. I came across a light skin vs. dark skin debate on an African website. "The truth is that most guys prefer light-skinned girls to darker ones whether or not we admit it. I don't know what to attribute it to but most guys are naturally attracted to fair-skinned girls," said one man.
And this from another male, "I must admit that I have a certain "thing" for yellow ladies just as all of us tend to prefer more beautiful ladies." And finally, one gentleman had this to say, "No man hates black skin, but I personally prefer white women to black women." The last commentator throws a spanner in the works because where the first two have what seems to be a purely cosmetic preference for 'yellow ladies', the last one doesn't mind dark skin; he simply prefers the white individual over the black individual.
The so-called 'white man's burden' was to civilise the primitive African. In the post-colonial era, the black man bears the burden to 'un-civilise' his mind, removing the false notion that only white is right. In the late 1950s, John Howard Griffin, a white man in segregated America, darkened his skin and entered the world of the Negro in America's Deep South. He then published a novel titled Black Like Me in 1960 documenting his experience.
In the novel, Griffin asks a 'fellow black man' what he would consider to be the biggest problem facing the race, the man had this to say; "We work against one another instead of together... you have to be almost a mulatto (mixed race and very fair skinned), have your hair conked and all slicked...then the Negro will look up to you." "[The white man] uses this knowledge to flatter some of us, to tell us we are above our people, not like most Negroes." This manipulation of a race has its roots in slavery, when light-skinned blacks were 'house slaves' while the 'darkies' were put to work in the fields.
The yellow yellows were considered good enough for the more gentile household tasks while the dark-skinned slaves were relegated to the back breaking and menial kazi ya mkono. In Kenya, being of mixed race is an automatic stamp of beauty. Socalled point fives are considered aesthetically superior regardless of the symmetry of their features. We tend to describe beauty or lack thereof using skin colour as a focal point. I recall asking a friend about a girl he was seeing.
In my opinion, they were totally incompatible, but among his several, thoroughly politically incorrect reasons for dating her was the fact that she was light, short and slim. Of course the height and weight issue opens up a whole other can of worms! But it would appear to me that we've already had enough flack for being black from external sources, it baffles the mind to think that we would subject ourselves to more abuse internally.
The 'house slave' mentality has left an indelible stain on the black psyche. Colonialists used it to great success to divide and rule the African people. But it is not only black people who struggle with their pigmentation. In India, pale skin is a sign of caste superiority while dark skin relegates a person to the lowest class.
Similarly, in Latin America - refer to any 'Mexican' soap - the lighter-skinned, fair-headed sorts are automatically upgraded to the higher echelons of society while those on the darker end of the spectrum are considered lowly and best suited to lives of servitude.
While the African predilection towards fair skin has historical undertones, our obsession with it as evidenced by the easy availability of skin bleaching products on the local market, is reinforced by current standards of beauty. We are surrounded by beautiful images and beauty tends to come in a light-skinned package. Even women featured in cosmetic commercials emphasise the yellow standard.
Nowadays it's the girls in the rap videos, the girl who gets the guy on TV and in the movies and the models on international catwalks where dark skin, like that of supermodel Alek Wek, is considered acceptable only insofar as it is an exotic novelty.
We have readily and without question assimilated the "light is beautiful" ideal. As the black man said in Black Like Me, "...you have to be almost a mulatto, then the Negro will look up to you...[then] you've got class. Isn't that a pitiful herotype?" Indeed. The real issue ought not to be the colour of your skin, but as one man put it, the colour of your mind.
