Kenyan women illegally inject themselves with skin-lightening creams because their men love whiter skins

There is a worrying beauty trend emerging in Kenya. Popular among the Kenyan elite is the illegal ‘skin-bleaching’ injections which dramatically lighten the skin’s pigment.

It cost around $70 a pop, the process involves injecting mercury-containing creams which are intended to be applied topically, allegedly because they work much faster to lighten the skin that way.

It is very competitive in Kenya and Kenyan men like women with whiter skin’ one customer of the procedure, a woman in her mid-Twenties reveals.

Beauticians are claiming the injections can make their customers look six years younger and their skin a shocking ten shades lighter, and they are gaining particular popularity on Nairobi’s River Road – a busy marketplace notorious for it black market commerce and bribed law enforcement.

 Some beauticians are even saying the illegal treatment, the injectable substances is so ‘strong’, it is capable of turning customers into ‘albinos”

A beautician who had been treating her own skin for five years and her previous, much darker skin tone is only visible in the patches of skin around her knuckles and elbows.

‘The injection lightens you from the inside. It makes women clean.’ Rose a beautician says. ‘Most of my clients are wealthy and some are national celebrities. Many are Somali or Indian. But those ones never come to my shop. They send a driver with a photo of their skin colour and I supply what they need.

Mercy a customer says her dream is to be ‘as white as a European’ and her motive is this: ‘My husband prefers half-caste women to darker girls, and he is proud to be mine when we go to club. I get far more male attention now I am lighter.

Controversy surrounding skin-lightening as a whole is nothing new. In recent years, several American-based celebrities of color have come under fire for allegedly bleaching their skin to appear more Caucasian, including Rihanna, Nicki Minaj and Beyonce.

before

after

In August 2008, for example, cosmetics giant L’Oreal was accused of ‘whitewashing’ Beyonce's skin in an advert by digitally lightening it. Other commentators suspect to this day that Beyonce has been using skin-lightening treatments for years.

And who could forget the drastic transformation Michael Jackson underwent over the course of his career, not just to his skin color but also the shape of his face, all in an effort - it has been speculated - to look less classically African American.

His autopsy in 2010 did reveal that the pop star had a condition called Vitiligo, which causes patches of the skin to lose their pigment and turn pale.

However, his room was also found to be strewn with different varieties of skin-lightening creams, according to The Associated Press, which perhaps he used to even out his skin tone.

I just cannot believe what I am hearing.  These women would prefer to contact possible skin cancer and other deadly skin related afflictions for a man’s appreciation? Some people do not really know what to live for, so they practically live for nothing. I wish them well but when skin cancer comes calling or skin patches as they grow older, I hope these same men they have destroyed their lives for won’t go out seeking for new and younger women leaving them to suffer for their stupidity alone. Unbelievable!