Our Bodies, Ourselves (12 page)
Read Our Bodies, Ourselves Online
Authors: Boston Women's Health Book Collective
Two common active ingredients used in skin-lightening creams are corticosteroids (such as hydrocortisone), which can make the skin more thin and fragile over time and cause excess hair growth and skin rashes and infections, and hydroquinone, which may act as a carcinogen or cancer-causing chemical, although its cancer-causing properties have yet to be proved in humans. Hydroquinone also has been linked with the medical condition ochronosis, which causes the skin to become dark and thick.
Advertisers are now using social media to encourage the virtual whitening of one's skin. The skin care company Vaseline launched a skin-lightening application for Facebook in India, encouraging users to lighten their skin in their profile pictures. According to a representative from the global advertising firm that designed the campaign, the response to the application has been “phenomenal.”
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The preference for lighter skin is reinforced when a woman of color appears in advertisements or on magazine covers and her skin is digitally lightened.
Elle
magazine came under fire for the dramatic lightening of cover models Aishwarya Rai, a star of Indian cinema, and Oscar-nominated actress Gabourey Sidibe.
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And though L'Oréal Parisâthe world's largest cosmetics maker, whose product line includes skin-whitening creamsâdenied digitally altering Beyoncé's features or skin tone in a hair color campaign, the singer's skin tone seemed remarkably different.
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IN TRANSLATION: SKIN WHITENING: AT WHAT COST?
Group:
Groupe de Recherche sur les Femmes et les Lois au Sénégal (GREFELS)
Country:
Senegal
Resource:
Notre Corps, Notre Santé (Our Body, Our Health)
, inspired by
Our Bodies, Ourselves
for French-speaking Africa
Website:
grefels.org
The use of cosmetic products to bleach or lighten the skin is a growing issue worldwide, with products heavily marketed in Africa and South Asia, as well as throughout Japan and some Caribbean countries. Lighter skin is not only portrayed as a beauty ideal but also associated with higher economic and social status.
In countries such as Tanzania, the skin-whitening industry is worth millions. Creams cost the equivalent of $4 to $10 each, a huge sum of money in a country where the average daily wage is less than $1. The products are dangerous as well as costly.
Our Bodies Ourselves' partner in SenegalâGroupe de Recherche sur les Femmes et les Lois au Sénégal (GREFELS)âhas found that many African women who lighten their skin do so despite being aware of the risks to their health. In the
Our Bodies, Ourselves
for French-speaking Africa, GREFELS explicitly challenges skin-whitening practices, drawing special attention to possible cancers caused by bleaching.
The French edition of
Our Bodies, Ourselves
The authors note in the preface that the book aims to provide African women with knowledge to take care of and appreciate their bodies. “An important part of the book,” they write, “is about the representations men and women have about women's bodies, health, and sexuality, about the way women's bodies are used, taken care of, dressed, and/or violated.”
While some countries are trying to minimize skin bleaching, specifically by bans on sales, GREFELS believes that a deeper critique of the constellation of factors that influence the health and identity of women and girls in African society is imperative and long overdue.
Rochelle Ritchie, a reporter for WPTV NewsChannel 5, goes natural during a special report on black women's hair. (Screenshot via WPTV.com)
Hair relaxers, extensions, and wigs marketed to African-American women and others have many potential dangers, from loss of hair to permanent burn damage. Many of the products can contain significant amounts of carcinogens and allergens such as formaldehyde. The choice for many of us to “go natural” would seem to present a simple solution, but it is a testimony to the embedded white beauty ideals that the choice is fraught with anxiety. Relaxed, long hair is considered professional; wearing our hair in braids or cornrows is not. Black women have received fewer promotions and been fired from jobs (or not hired in the first place) for wearing ethnic styles.
When Rochelle Ritchie, a multimedia journalist for WPTV News Channel 5 in West Palm Beach, Florida, did a special report on going natural, she noted that when she started in TV, she was told she needed hair extensions.
So for six years she chemically straightened and artificially lengthened her hair. But she put an end to all that during her report, letting viewers watch as a stylist chopped off Ritchie's damaged hair so she could return to her own natural style. Another woman featured in the piece did the same thing, in part because her six-year-old daughter had developed insecurities about her own natural hair. The daughter was thrilled with her mom's new lookâand her own: “I love my natural hair, it's like my mom's, and it's beautiful.”
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COLORISM, BLACK WOMEN, AND CONTEMPORARY REPRESENTATION
Courtney Young (thethirtymilewoman.wordpress.com) writes frequently about the intersection of pop culture, gender, and race.
Colorism is a widely understood yet rarely challenged form of discrimination in which the lightness of one's skin tone affords preferential social treatment to one group of people over another. Colorism is so deeply entrenched within the social fabric that there are studies available to prove that lighter-skinned blacks have higher incomes, receive preferential treatment in classroom settings, get hired and promoted at much larger rates within the corporate sphere, more often report the news, andâespecially in the case of womenâstar in more Hollywood films, and even are executed at much lower rates than their darker-skinned counterparts. Though certainly colorism affects men of color, there are particular ways in which it is especially nuanced in the political and social lives of African-American women.
When Michelle Obama took up residence in the White House as first lady in 2009, she brought a new definition of beauty to the world. An extraordinarily accomplished and brilliant woman in her own right, Michelle, to the wide delight of many African-American women, is a dark-skinned woman. Vanessa Williams states, “If a black president represents change, a dark-skinned first lady is straight-up revolutionaryâ¦. The lingering effects of racism and sexism, coupled with a beauty industrial complex that constantly assaults our senses with images of female beauty that trend toward the lighter end of the racial color wheel, has rendered dark-skinned women nearly invisible in mainstream media.”
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Issues of colorism and visibility would no doubt be a larger part of the public discussion if that discourse paid more attention to the intersection of race and gender. As it is, the many ways colorismâalong with racism and classismâaffects women of color are obscured and marginalized. Yet the impacts are felt personally, professionally, and politically.
Worldwide sales of fragrances, cosmetics, and toiletries have reached $330 billion per year, with the ten biggest companies accounting for more than half of all sales.
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The cosmetics and beauty industry spends $2.2 billion on advertising everything from hair dyes to cellulite cream.
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Although the vast majority of beauty products and magazines are marketed to women, men are no longer exempt from our culture's high expectations. Men's worldwide spending on skin care, hair care, bath and shower products, and deodorant jumped 44 percent between 2004 and 2009.
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And body-sculpting products such as Spanx that have long been sold to women are now being made for men who want the appearance of a smoother tummy.
Despite its reach, the cosmetics industry is one of the least regulated in the United Statesâa frightening fact considering that the average
woman uses ten beauty products a day.
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Nearly all of our personal care products are made with at least one and usually several ingredients that have never been assessed for safety by the government or any other publicly accountable institution.
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LESBIAN IN/VISIBILITY
Anxieties over hair can be acute for any woman who defies the long and straight ideal. Those of us who cut or shave our hair short, or color or shape our hair in nontraditional ways, especially if we are lesbian or transgender, are more prone to looks from others and even discrimination.
DIS
magazine subverts traditional beauty salon imagery with an alternative salon poster featuring hairstyles usually associated with lesbians.
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“The collection of these creative and varied haircuts brings into stark relief the hyperfeminized options most women encounter at the salon,” writes Lisa Wade, assistant professor of sociology at Occidental College.
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The poster (available for purchase or free download) is accompanied online by a heady analysis of gender identity and the queer female body in the twenty-first century. It also offers some practical advice for the budget minded:
W4W Buzz at DISMAGAZINE.COM by Marco Roso and Lauren Boyle
It started with a razor clip, followed by a scissor snip. THE W4W BUZZ features a variety of styles from close-cropped sides with more hair on top, to fades, buzzcuts and undercuts. Because of the seemingly limitless possibilities, age isn't a factor; nor is hair texture, gender, or orientation. Whether you're male or female, trans or sans, these conveniently priced hairstyle solutions are simple and easy-to-meme. Say so long to the salon and hello to your neighborhood barbershop.
The pursuit of beauty is often fraught with health and safety risksâsome that are known and others that we're still discovering. When blood and urine samples from twenty teenage girls from across the country were tested, the samples were found to include an average of thirteen potential hormone-disrupting preservatives, plasticizers, and other cosmetic chemicals.
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Moreover, carcinogens like formaldehyde
and neurotoxins like lead are often found in trace amounts in cosmetics and personal care items.
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Check out
Chapter 25
, “Environmental and Occupational Health,” for more information.
WONDERING WHAT'S IN YOUR COSMETICS AND BEAUTY PRODUCTS?
Representatives Jan schakowsky (D-IL), Ed Markey (D-MA), and Tammy Baldwin (D-WI) introduced the Safe Cosmetics Act of 2010 (H.R.5786), which gives the U.S. Food and Drug Administration authority to ensure that personal care products are free of harmful ingredients. For more information, check out the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics, safecosmetics.org.
Indoor tanning is a popular pastime for those seeking the fresh-from-the-beach look, despite studies showing indoor tanning increases the risk of skin cancer.
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A recent study of college students found that among those who had repeatedly used tanning beds, approximately one-third met an addiction standard, meaning they exhibited dependency the same way others are dependent on alcohol and drugs: They missed class or other activities to tan, felt guilty about tanning too much, and were unable to cut down on indoor tanning time.
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