Wearing a Mask. Voluntary Depigmentation among Continental Africans: An Aesthetic Revolution or a Post-Colonial Traumatism?

Abstract

For almost half a century, Continental African women have been using chemical products with strong depigmenting potency in order to lighten their skin. This article examines the socio-cultural and psychological motivations that lead Continental African women to use cosmetic de-pigmenting products in order to deliberately either lessen or completely get rid of the production of melanin pigments in their skin. Dermatologists and other health professionals have warned against the potentially damaging and even deadly health consequences of bleaching products since the early 1970s. Nevertheless, starting from the 1970s on, the use of de-pigmenting products has increasingly and dramatically become a social, cultural, and aesthetic trend in several African countries, especially among the women population. I argue in this paper that beyond being a mere fashion trend, voluntary de-pigmentation along with the cult of whiteness that it embodies symbolizes a strong expression of an ill-resolved conflict resulting from post colonial traumatism on the African psyche. My contention is that Continental Africans have internalized Western beauty ideals (of which skin colour is the most outward manifestation) so much so that they have attached to light skin social, cultural, economic and political meanings and values alien and most of the time contradictory to their indigenous established social, political, cultural, and economic realities.