{"id":40567,"date":"2017-10-23T04:00:27","date_gmt":"2017-10-23T08:00:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=40567"},"modified":"2017-10-22T12:51:56","modified_gmt":"2017-10-22T16:51:56","slug":"today-i-learned-a-new-word-pigmentocracy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2017\/10\/23\/today-i-learned-a-new-word-pigmentocracy\/","title":{"rendered":"Today I learned a new word: Pigmentocracy"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the Guardian<\/em>, Afua Hirsch<\/a> writes about the recent Nivea skin cream video to explain why the ad is so controversial:<\/p>\n

\u201cNow I have visibly fairer skin, making me feel younger,\u201d declares the Nigerian actor Omowunmi Akinnifesi in an advert for a new face cream. The ad, for the global skincare brand Nivea, was only ever intended to reach a west African audience, but predictably \u2013 has Nivea heard of the internet? \u2013 it has been watched and shared millions of times around the world including in the UK, where most of us live in blissful ignorance of the fact that some of our most popular brands openly promote the idea in other markets that white is right.<\/p>\n

Nivea says the ad was not intended to offend, but offence is not the point. The global market for skin lightening products, of which west Africa is a significant part, is worth $10bn (\u00a37.6bn). Advertising has a long and unbroken history of promoting and normalising white beauty standards, and if Britain built its empire as a geopolitical and ideological project, the advertising industry commodified it. Soap brands such as Pears built a narrative that cast Africa as dark and its people as dirty, the solution to which \u2013 conveniently \u2013 was soap. Cleansing, lightening and civilising in one handy bar.<\/p>\n

These days the marketing has become much more sophisticated. Ads speak of \u201ctoning\u201d as code for whitening. Lanc\u00f4me, which a few years ago got in trouble for using Emma Watson\u2019s image to market its Blanc Expert line in Asia, emphasised that it does not lighten, but rather \u201cevens skin tone, and provides a healthy-looking complexion \u2026 an essential part of Asian women\u2019s beauty routines\u201d.<\/p>\n

[…]<\/p>\n

Shadism, pigmentocracy \u2013 the idea of privilege accruing to lighter-skinned black people \u2013 and other hierarchies of beauty are a complex picture in which ads such as Nivea\u2019s are only the obvious tip of an insidious iceberg. Celebrities with darker complexions, such as the Sudanese model Nyakim Gatwech \u2013 nicknamed Queen of the Dark \u2013 and actors such as Lupita Nyong\u2019o, are so often discussed in the context of having achieved the seemingly impossible by being both dark and beautiful, that they become the exceptions that prove the rule.<\/p>\n

It is often observed that light-skinned black women are more likely to become global superstars, the Beyonc\u00e9-Rihanna effect. They are, however, still black women and therefore not immune from the pressure to lighten \u2013 most recently by fans following a new Photoshopping trend of posting pictures of whitened versions of their faces and remarking upon the improvement.<\/p>\n

In countries such as Ghana, the intended audience for the Nivea ad, and Nigeria \u2013 where an estimated 77% of women use skin-lightening products \u2013 the debate has so far, understandably, focused on health. The most toxic skin-lightening ingredients, still freely available, include ingredients such as hydroquinone, mercury and corticosteroid. It\u2019s not unusual for these to be mixed with caustic agents ranging from automotive battery acid, washing power, toothpaste and cloth bleaching agents, with serious and irreversible health consequences.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the Guardian, Afua Hirsch writes about the recent Nivea skin cream video to explain why the ad is so controversial: \u201cNow I have visibly fairer skin, making me feel younger,\u201d declares the Nigerian actor Omowunmi Akinnifesi in an advert for a new face cream. The ad, for the global skincare brand Nivea, was only […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[362,831,66,28],"tags":[97,850,843,99,43],"class_list":["post-40567","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-africa","category-business","category-health-science","category-media","tag-advertising","tag-ghana","tag-nigeria","tag-racism","tag-women"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-ayj","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40567","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40567"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40567\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":40568,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40567\/revisions\/40568"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40567"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40567"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40567"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}