Amongst many African communities, the social media 10 year challenge has now tuned into a ridicule charade where the skin lightening epidemic is the butt of the joke.
Unfortunate, there is not one big platform to survey the results of the 10 year challenge, now has there been any mass research. However what is obvious, of which it is so bad its becoming factor people are mocking, is how so many black women/girls are suddenly lighter than before.
What is more surprising is that some proudly post their 10 year (before dark/now lighter) images as if they have made some sort of achievement when in reality sane people view them with pity (and in some cases like mine, pathetic).
When the discussing of bleaching and bleachers arise, most people think of the yellow skinned girl with brown knuckles and skin patches, but the truth is i exists beyond that. Sometimes its the caramel skinned girl who was once brown. Sometimes it’s the brown skinned girl who was once dark, and some times its the dark skinned girl who was once very dark.
Most black people, or at least those in black social groups are witnessing this embarrassing reality amongst many of their peers on social media. It’s almost as if these selected number of women/girls are living in a bubble and actually thinking the rest of society appreciates them more.
So the question is why are black woman so embarrassed about their skin tone? Could it be many girls are just generally insecure and the first thing they can easily blame is the skin tone. Yes we reserve the right to believe some of these alterations may be due to different lightening, or filters. But Even if one wishes to argue that some haven’t bleached, but only used app filters, then the question remains why would they feel the need to do so if they didn’t feel it made them more beautiful?
How many times have we witnessed the before and after make up images where for some reason the after is always lighter? anyways, see a handful of bleachers we picked off our timeline in less than 30 minutes and you can only imagine what is really out there.