Profiting from Insecurity: How the Skin Lightening Industry Fuels Colourism

“You’re pretty. You’d be even prettier if you weren’t so dark.”

Imagine hearing this statement, a clearly backhanded compliment from an aunt or uncle, someone you’ve known your whole life. The idea that being of a lighter skin colour equates to beauty and a being of a darker skin tone equates to being unattractive, is offensive as well as hurtful. Sadly its common one, especially among minority communities.

Colourism - this is the term used to describe discrimination of darker skin tones, especially in one’s own ethnic or racial group. Lighter skin tones are associated with beauty, opportunity, increased chance in finding love, and even wealth in many countries such as Nigeria and the Philippines. Colourist beliefs have deep roots in slavery and colonialism, with many of these communities adopting western beauty standards and traditional ones being lost. This has led people to try and find effective ways to achieve this standard of beauty. How is this possible? Well through a cosmetics market expected to reach 14.60 billion dollars by 2031- the skin lightening market.

The skin lightening market is set to makeup a big portion of the cosmetics market in many countries, such as India were SLP make up 61% of the cosmetics market. These products are used regularly and even praised within communities, with 77% of Nigerian woman regularly using SLP. Many companies that we know and love, such as Nivea and Garnier sell these products , and in the process endanger millions of lives, making them morally reprehensible due to how they market and make theses products. Ironically, companies such as Unilever, have campaigns on self-love and feeling beautiful in your own skin, while owning brands such as Fair and Lovely which has an annual revenue of £256 billion.

These companies use fake advertising to get these products off of shelves, recruiting naturally light skin models for these adverts, creating a false hope for consumers who truly believe this product will help them achieve the lighter skin colour they desire, and even if they don’t, they will continue to use the product in hopes of this. This can lead to depression and body dysmorphia, driving behaviors aimed at correcting perceived flaws. Moreover, it often results in heightened stress, compounded by the irresponsible practices of certain companies that exploit these vulnerabilities.

Many ingredients used in skin lightening products are toxic to the human body, with active ingredients such as mercury, which can cause mercury poisoning, which causes tremors, nerve loss in face and hands and vision loss. even liver damage. Anther ingredient being hydroquinone, which isn’t safe to use in concentrations of more than 4%. It can cause ochronosis - a blue-ish Gray discolouration. What makes this situation even worse is that these products are barely ever listed on these products, leading to consumers being misled.

Companies are aware of these risks. They’re aware that they’re preying on the insecurities of a community, suffering that stretches back for decades just for a quick profit. Nevertheless, many companies will say they’re only catering to the consumers needs- as the customer is always right. And with this business expected to have a compounded annual growth of 7.8% from the year 2022 to 2023- skin lightening makes up a half of the cosmetics market at a global level. A survey done by the British skin foundation saw that 22% of people that used these products explained their culture deemed lighter skin tones more attractive. They are not going to stop producing these products anytime soon due to the demand and profit they gain.

I believe that companies are morally reprehensible, using the pain and suffering of ethnic communities in order to make a profit. Colourism is an issue which fuels low self-esteem and companies know this is something that they can profit off of. They know colourism is marketable. They know it harms people. These Companies need to be held responsible for helping fuel the fire and helping keep colourist beliefs alive.