What's In A Lightening Cream?

Depending upon where you buy your lightening creams, they can contain some worrying ingredients, including "anti-melanin" ingredients and even regular bleach - the kind that you'd put down your toilet to bleach out stains, used to bleach out the dark color of your skin. Put into those terms, it sounds horrible, but this is something that thousands of women use every single day.

The anti-melanin products are actively dangerous in that they reduce the concentration of melanin in the skin.

Products that use bleach are dangerous in an obvious way: they contain bleach, which isn't something that should come into contact with your skin, but when it does it can have more than disastrous consequences, leading to seemingly minor skin complaints such as redness, rashes and minor swelling, to major skin complaints such as third degree burns and permanent color change. Although permanent color change might sound like the desired effect, it isn't. Think about how your tan can sometimes appear - blotchy, orange and streaky. That's exactly how skin lightening creams can appear. There's no guarantee that they'll go on evenly, that they'll bleach exactly the spots that you want them to bleach and evenly lighten all of your skin tone in one go. Nope.

So although your skin may be lighter, it could still be uneven, blotchy and dark in places - which is pretty much the exact opposite of what you were hoping for. Some products contain hydroquinone, which is known to cause itching and irritation, as well as mercury, which is thought to increase skin pigmentation and cause severe skin rash. 

Real Women

See Also: BB Cream Or Foundation: Which Is Best For My Skin?

Dove's Real Women campaign increased sales by a whopping 700% and showed women of all colors, shapes and sizes using their products. It's a step in the right direction, but it's still not enough. Although it showed women of color, women who were bigger than the "norm", these campaigns still failed to show petite women, women with big bellies, women with bigger thighs, shorter legs, shorter torsos, short hair - all of the women were still very much conventionally attractive and taller than average. The only thing that was different was that some were slightly bigger than average and some were women of color. We need to be embracing women of all colors and at the same time, making sure that we do not fetishize women of "exotic" backgrounds. Everyone is beautiful, whatever their skin color - but we need to start focusing on the whole package - eye shape, bone structure, hair, cheeks - everything that makes you you and that makes you look beautiful.