Word: skins
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...Kenya Bureau of Standards. Still, he says, many of the more harmful products continue to sell because people want quick results. "Are you familiar with the 50-50 concept: someone who has one black parent and one white?" he asks, explaining the social pressures on women to lighten their skin. "When a girl like that walks into a bar all the men will look at her. So other girls want to make themselves like that...
...risky way to win admiration. Hydroquinone is available only by prescription in Europe and closely regulated in the U.S. In small concentrations, the bleaching agent poses few problems and is often used by dermatologists to treat various skin conditions. But prolonged use stops the production of melanin, a natural pigment that protects the skin from the sun, and increases the likelihood of skin cancers. Damaged skin cells also "make the skin very weak," says chemist Wangai. Veins show through and, over time, the skin may actually become darker and develop hard nodules. "But even when they know that, women keep...
...Kenya, South Africa and Cameroon, they remain widely available. A makeshift shopping bazaar on the top floor of a guesthouse in central Nairobi, for instance, has three stands selling hundreds of tubes of creams for between $1.30 and $2.50, most of them imported from Europe. There's IKB Skin Litener Cream, which boasts that it is "extra strength" and can be found in "London, Lagos, Paris and New York." There's Princess, Kiss, Jaribu (Swahili for try) and one brand which, oddly, has a photo of a white woman...
...will look like her," says Rose, who tends the store and does not want to give her last name for fear of a visit from the inspectors. But Kenyan women generally have such beautiful skin anyway. Why endanger it? "Whoever is beautiful has used some cream," she says. "We accept that we are beautiful, but we need to be more beautiful...
...Nancy Kariuki began using skin-lightening creams aged 18 after she developed a rash on her face. "After a few weeks I noticed where the patch had been was very smooth," says Kariuki, now 30, who works as a production assistant in a Nairobi advertising company. She began applying it every night to her whole face. Her skin grew lighter but every time she was exposed to too much sun "my face went red and three weeks later it would all peel off." Friends told her that the cream may be dangerous but she persisted. Even her maid started...