*In Kingston (Jamaica), Mikeisha Simpson covers her body in greasy white cream and bundles up in a track suit to avoid the fierce sun of her native Jamaica, but she’s not worried about skin cancer.
The 23-year-old resident of a Kingston ghetto hopes to transform her dark complexion to a cafe-au-lait-color common among Jamaica’s elite and favored by many men in her neighborhood. She believes a fairer skin could be her ticket to a better life. So she spends her meager savings on cheap black-market concoctions that promise to lighten her pigment.
Simpson and her friends ultimately shrug off public health campaigns and reggae hits blasting the reckless practice.
Felicia James, a 20-year-old resident of the Matthews Lane slum, said skin bleaching just makes her feel special, like she’s walking around in a spotlight. She was taught to bleach by her older sister and her friends.
“It’s just the fashionable thing to do. After I bleach, I’m cris,” she said, using a Jamaican term for cool. “Plus, a lot of the boys are doing it now, too.”
People around the world often try to alter their skin color, using tanning salons or dyes to darken it or other chemicals to lighten it. In the gritty slums of Jamaica, doctors say the skin lightening phenomenon has reached dangerous proportions.
Read/learn MORE at Yahoo News.
I know there are regions in Africa that also practice this and it’s also done in D.R. I want the birth defect and miscarriage statistics for these areas please.
And, what are you fools gonna do when you have dark-skinned children?! Are you gonna try to develop a technique to lighten them from within the womb. Dumb asses! Be happy with and work what cha got damn it!
This is disgusting. I guess some people will never be happy with who they are/what they look like. I couldn’t fathom changing/bleaching my skin.
Cosign Testic. Good afternoon to you.
Good afternoon homey! Sorry for coming back to this post so late. LOL!
How sad; nobody wants to be black anymore. I remember watching a program years ago about asains going to these quack doctors that somehow slits their eyes to make it not slant, so they can have big eyes like americans – it was awful!
And there lies the problem….It’s a phenom in this country, too. Don’t fool yourself. Look at all of the black entertainers. It’s if they have morphed to one color. Beyonce, Nicki Minaj, Ciara, Alicia Keys, Cassie and a whole host of other singers are light as all out. There is no variation in skin tone in the music videos either. There seems to be a push to make everyone have a racial ‘homogenous’ look. It’s like being medium to dark toned skin is a no-no. It alot of this has to do with the message that is being sent to people of color all over the world. That being light skinned to lily white is where it’s at. BTW, I wouldn’t be surprised if some entertainers bleach their skin. These folks have taken it to an extreme because the message being sent in society that being dark or having African features is a no-no. Sad, indeed.
NYCsoul I disagree with you when you said “there is no variation” in skin tone in music videos.
So which music videos promptly show medium to darker women (maybe I should have been specific?) in their videos (of course without the booty shaking)? Or even in mainstream media on a consistent basis? I’m not talking one here or there. I’m mean on a every day, 24-7 rotation. I just don’t see that. Even on Spanish language TV doesn’t have that. You would think all Latin folks were one color.
Bleaching a’int y’alls problem. Being dumbasses iz.
(Spellings Mine)
Here we go again. The media jumping on what they think is an opportunity to put Jamaica down.
There is nothing new abut skin bleaching in Jamaica or any where else, though It may be getting more attention now. A few idiots have been doing this for decades. This is in no way a reflection of Jamaicans in general.
I noticed also that this story is from the AP. It was the same AP who during the Dudus affair would use every opportunity to refer to the residents of Tivoli Gardens as slum dwellers.
I also noticed in this article, a liberal use of terms such as ghetto, gritty slums, impoverished …
This is just sad! SMDH!!
if that dude is the purported end result, I’d peel my skin off…..eeeuuuuuw.
why is it that you never see very light skinned women with naturally straight hair living in the projects?
?????
Don’t know what you’re trying to get at, but I grew up in the projects and there were plenty of light skinded girls with “good hurr” in my ‘hood.
ok–there wasn’t a point to the question… it was just a question based on an observation made with a friend who lives in another state. thanks for the clarification. this proves that driving past the area is quite different from living there