Make no mistake about it folks: black is beautiful. However, due to some unfortunate cultural prejudices, and sometimes due to some legitimate skin issues, some African Americans, Black people, and Hispanics find it necessary to undergo skin bleaching procedures. A skin bleaching is a type of cosmetic procedure that aims to reduce the amount of melanin (darker pigment) in one’s skin, therefore creating a lighter appearance. These procedures fall into multiple categories: combination, laser treatments, and cryosurgery; and they’ve been performed on a number of celebrities.
Combination skin bleaching treatments are meant to block melanin production by inhibiting the function of tyrosinase (an enzyme that is involved in melanin production…obviously). They do so through the usage of topical creams that contain things like tretinoin, hydroquinone, arbutin, kojic acid, azeliac acid, vitamin c, glutathione, cinnamomum subavenium, alpha hydroxy acids, and niacinamide; some of which have been shown to be unhealthy for skin, and even carconagenic. Combination treatments are the most popular and affordable methods of skin lightening, and have been effective in many cases.
Laser treatments of both the ablative and nonablative varieties have been shown to have effects on skin that’s suffering from melasma (a condition that basically breaks down to be “dark or darker skin spots”). Laser treatment can be very expensive though, and has been shown to sometimes cause hyper-pigmentation and do more damage than good.
Cryosurgery is usually used as an alternative to laser treatment, and although the idea of having liquid nitrogen freeze and destroy you skin cells in an attempt to cause melanin to rise up and peel off sounds scary…forget the “although”, that is scary. Anyhow, it works on freckles too, and hasn’t been shown to have major horrible side effects, so that’s a good thing.
Celebrities, as well as regular people, have all sorts of reasons for undergoing skin whitening and skin bleaching procedures. Sometime it’s to even out the effects of vitaligo (a skin condition that causes ultra-white spots), sometimes it’s just because they think they’re “too dark”, but the results are almost always the same: very noticeable. Stars like former Major League Baseball home-run hitter Sammy Sosa, rapper and plastic addict Lil’ Kim, Tempest Bledsoe (“Cosby Show” star sighting!), Lark Voorhies (Lisa Turtle from “Saved By The Bell”), and of course Michael Jackson all seem to have undergone some sort of skin whitening at some point. It’s really a shame too, because none of them seemed to be suffering from any sort of disorder…at least physically, mentally is a whole other story. It’s very likely that they all either suffer from some sort of body dysmorphia, or that they had an adverse reaction to some sort of treatment meant to just equal out their complexion. Regardless of the reasoning, it always kind of stinks to see someone flat out change the color of their skin. Plastic surgery can be crazy on it’s own, but changing a fundamental characteristic of one’s self is a bit much for our liking. Like we said, black is beautiful…and so is white…and so is whatever skin color you were born with; be yourselves at least a little bit people.
What’s Up With Skin Bleaching?
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