Bleaching Trends in Nigeria

 






Like drugs, the rich, powerful and the upper class Nigerians are getting hooked to it. Affluent Nigerian men and women who bleach their skin are growing in their numbers. You see them in their posh cars, in super-markets or shopping malls; in well-appointed offices, in the aircrafts and even in the boardrooms, among many other places.

In recent years, this class of super-rich Nigerians have found it fashionable to bleach their dark skin pigmented skin to “ look good “ like models, new born babies or like creatures from another planet. Some of them, on enquires, would readily tell you that they are not bleaching but rather “ toning up “. While some look good in their new skin, others simply appear funny and ridiculous in their newly acquired complexion. They bleach their bodies “ white or red “ with expensive and mostly imported high percentage hydroquinone and mercury filled body creams, all in a bid to look attractive and trendy.

Though the poor and the not so rich in Nigeria also bleach, but the proportion of those who engage in this practice is relatively higher among the wealthy class. In the league of privileged Nigerians who bleach or tone their bodies as the case may be, are politicians, business men and women, senior military officers and those in the other armed and para-military services; top government functionaries and civil servants, corporate chief executives, high street industrialists, musicians, successful private entrepreneurs, those in the formal professions as well as some clergy men and women, etc.

To these groups of people, body bleaching has become a fad, a show of wealth and acquired status. It is also a way of keeping up with the trend of the new age and to make themselves appealing and acceptable to the opposite sex and to the younger generation. In addition to body bleaching creams, is the use of specialized cosmetics and other forms of make-up by the rich and world leaders who have skin deficiencies or are surviving serious manifest health challenges.

Culled