A film writer demonstrating the effect of Bleaching Cream, Black Barbie a recent educative short movie is recently nominated for AMAA Awards in 2017 and gaining popularity in Ghana
Before and after photo of boxer Bukom Banku who admitted to bleaching earlier this year
Bleaching is in many African countries growing to become a public health crisis. The ease and affordability of skin lightening products have contributed to the rise in bleaching among many women and men in Ghana and Nigeria
Comfort Arthur is a British-born Ghanaian animator and illustrator who just made a film about bleaching. She confesses to trying to bleach her skin when she was 23 years old because she didn’t love her skin.
“I have two sisters and its a family of six. My two sisters are light in colour and when we used to go out, as a child especially when we used to come to Ghana, people would use to notice my two sisters over me and go like ‘oh you're beautiful’ and growing up that messed me up mentally.
"I began to feel that my skin wasn't nice and that being dark was not good. And so eventually when I was 23, I tried bleaching products."
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billboard advertising bleaching
She eventually stopped using the products and her skin since then been restored to its natural caramel.
'I hate my colour'
But the idea for the film came to Comfort earlier this year when she went to a salon with two cousins.
"I was getting my hair done, and my two cousins, the same thing happened. One is dark in complexion and the other is lighter. As soon as the hairdresser saw the younger one (the fairer one) she was like 'oh my God, [you are] so beautiful.'"
“And I stopped and looked at the elder cousin, (the dark skinned one) and you could see it on her face. She looked so uncomfortable and really sad. So when they were going home, she called me aside and said ‘Sister Comfort, I want to bleach my skin. I hate my colour.’ So that was when I decided], I need to write about this."
Black Barbie
The short, powerful, poetic, animation, Black Barbie, was the result of these two experiences.
“It is about my experience as a child growing up and not liking my skin and eventually trying to bleach my skin. It also talks about an identity crisis and low self-esteem and [the film] in the end tries to encourage the viewers to love their skin”, Comfort says
The film tells Comfort’s story; about rejecting a black Barbie doll her mother gave her as a girl because it was not beautiful and eventually standing in front of an Asian shopkeeper in the UK at age 23 to buy a bleaching product.
Black Barbie has received critical acclaim in Ghana and around the world. The film has won Best Animation at the 2016 Ghana Movie Awards and Best Spoken Word film at the Real Time Film Festival (Lagos). It has also been screened at the Silicon Valley African Film Festival and the Africa International Film Festival (Lagos).
The black patched on the hands says it all, the gory effect of low self esteem of African
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So glad this film is getting so much acclaim! I hate how this has happened - that young people are hating their skin (also a big thing in India; or eyes, noses a big thing in the Far East). There are dark forces of materialism, commercialism, and even the residues of colonialism at work (although it also precedes that, with caste-issues). I hate it when true beauty is denied. Nothing worse than foolish self-deception. It is pernicious and very persistent.
Model Nayakim Gatwech (Sudan) was also told to bleach her skin. "Her photographs exhibit the pride she takes in her African roots and Nuer heritage." More beautiful shots of her here
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It bleeds my heart to read your comment, I also bleed for my country young ladies as well, and I become so weak at the site of older women bleaching so hard that you can through there veins and how the blood flow, then you begin to feel like vomiting when they don't have the cream to maintain and they start smelling like corpse, that's the worst part of it all.
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That is a vividly nasty description of the effects of bleaching!
Totally different, and yet basically (from a very great distance) the same: the bleaching especially Kaukasians do of their hair ALSO to resemble Barbie. It makes you want to sue Mattell! Then again, see how stubborn the demand is somehow, because whenever they do make a plumper or darker skinned (or male) version of their doll nobody likes it much.
I say, forget buying Barbie all together and appeal to the inner nature of a child.
They can come in any colour of the rainbow - shaped only to be age appropriate with the aim of developing the soul.
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Its not even an african thing, its universal :(, i hope the movie reduces that mentality
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It all boils down to low self esteem among women of every race, the white tan there body to be dark a little, the black litten there skin to become white.
But one is actually more dangerous than the other.
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