Saudi Arabia is a land of many wonderful beauty products for me. The shelves are filled with so many choices of deep conditioning treatments and moisturizing body scrubs that Michael Abraham circles the grocery store four times by the time I have narrowed it down to a couple choices. My hair and skin is very happy here, for the most part.
They have about every cream and lotion here that they do back in the states, except my old favorite Curél. That was my secret back home, put Ultra Strength Curél all over my face like three times a day. Try it, it works. So I have been on the search for a new facial moisturizer. Jergens body lotion just does not cut it. You would think with all of these other perfect products that I should have no problem. Well, here it is: They have Olay and L'oréal and Garnier and Ponds, all the normal brands. The issue with them is that most of the facial creams are bleaching creams. "Natural White" "Fair and Lovely" "White Beauty" "White Perfect" Night, day, oily, dry... they are almost all skin whiteners as well as your standard cream.
This is an interesting clip I saw a few years ago about skin bleaching in Jamaica.
Now, I am pretty sure that all these big name brands do not use hardcore chemicals in their creams, they stick to the well received alpha hydroxy acids and natural extracts. They just like the label, it sells. But if you look on the bottom shelves you can find off brand creams filled with melanin inhibitors and sometimes mercury. I have seen quite a few oddly fair complexioned women with some pretty scary acne and scars that I assume are caused by these products.
This is the story that takes the cake though. A few weeks ago, we ran into one of Michael's co-workers with his family. They had just had a baby girl. I was talking with the woman and I peeked into the little bundel she had in her arms. All snuggled up was a tiny girl with long dark eyelashes, creamy almond skin, and gold earrings. "She is beautiful!" I was not even just saying that, she was so warm and peaceful. The woman sighed and looked down at her new baby, "She is not beautiful. She is DARK." I was bothered by this. I did not know how to respond. We soon parted ways and I asked Michael if maybe it was some sort of communication error, something lost in translation, even though I felt that it really was not. The next day he went and had a talk with his co-worker. Michael asked about what his wife had said to me. His response was something like, "I love my daughter, she is very lovely in her own way, but she is dark. Her brother is so beautiful with his light skin, but she is dark."
WTF. Really!?! I still think of this every day. I hope this baby girl's skin can not hold her back, I hope her parents outgrow this "hurdle" of her being "dark", I really hope she does not feel pressure to smear on chemicals ever. She is Saudi, what color is she suposed to be!
It is terrible to think of all these white girls in the United States becoming orange and addicted to tanning, and at the same time girls over here are scrubbing and peeling and soaking their skin with chemicals to become whiter. It all can cause skin cancer. Please just enjoy your natural color, for your health and bank accounts!
