Is it White Chyna now? Blac Chyna pedals $250 skin whitening cream (that could be deadly)

As if by divine connection with an earlier piece on this here site on Black Fishing, we are back to talking about dysmorphic behaviors, only this time, we are talking skin lightening.

Yes it is a thing, and in fact it is something that we talked about quite literally 4 years ago in the product form of Whitenicious.

Whitenicious is actually not a new product but has been around some time now causing controversy. How it recently became relevant is that Blac Chyna, a personality most recently associated with the Kardashian/Jenner family has begun pedalling the skin bleaching creme. This product is actually not for sale in the States but is actually being sold in African countries.

So no, Blac Chyna herself has not created a skin lightening cream, but she is pedalling it. Whether she is doing it for relevancy or coin or attention, no one but she can say.

What is very clear is that there is a partnership between she and the original company created by Nigerian- Cameroonian star, Dencia. The Whitenicious x Blac Chyna Collection is being billed as "illuminating and brightening cream" that "lightens without bleaching skin out".

What is worse is the blatant ignoring of the harm these products can cause. Blac Chyna's product, coming in at a whopping $250 per swarovski encrusted jar, is currently being pedaled to some of the globe's poorest. The United Nations declared Nigeria to be the poverty capital of the world due to having the highest number of poor people in the world concentrated within its borders. And that is where Blac Chyna and Dencia are concentrating their Whitenicious launch. Most skin-lightening products aren't banned in Nigeria like they are in most countries due to the danger these creams pose. An astounding 77% of Nigerian women are reported to use some form of skin-lightening on a regular basis.

That means Whitenicious is predatorily targeting some of the poorest people to sell their $250 skin bleach, that could end up causing major health problems.

Doctors from around the continent are worried because of one key ingredient in skin lightening products that is especially harmful: MERCURY. The amount of mercury present is enough to do severe and serious damage to kidneys and liver.

All just to bleach the melanin from the skin?

This whole Whitenicious situation really confuses me. Whitenicious is a skin whitening product supposedly for the removal of "dark spots". Dencia, who not only I guess the dark spots she wanted removing was the one covering all over her body. Case and point:

Yep, this is Miss Dencia before the Whitenicious, and this is her after. (I don't understand. Im actually confused as to why she would want to harm herself in this way. She's a beautiful woman. Why? What? Huh?)

Dencia, standing behind her product, says on social media “S/O to everyone supporting whitenicious & s/0 to those indirectly supporting but thinking they’re hating with Ph.D. worthy Essays. #FreePress.”

Then I thought, Sure! I would endorse this product. After all who wants to be their natural hue? Why be brown when you can be bleached? I mean forget gorgeous deep hued women of color like Naomi Campbell, Lupita Nyong'o, Iman, Lauren Hill, Bethann Hardison, and Alek Wek to name a few among the Billions of others.

And you know what's even worse than Dencia, a woman from the motherland endorsing this product? The fact that it sold out within DAYS of it being released. Days.

What does that say about the global mental state of the Black Female? What does that reveal about how women of color really feel about their own beauty? Do we really believe that light skin is the right skin? Do we actually think that a hue other than our God-given skin tone would be better?

This can't be good. It's like we are bleaching the literal melanin from our skin.

Knowing full well what is in these products and the danger they pose to the human body, unlike here where there could be commercials from a big law firm doing a lawsuit for all the people who used this product and it had adverse effects, what is going to happen to those who cough up the $250 and literally poison themselves? (Something similar actually happened recently in Japan due to a skin whitening cream produced in Korea.)

Why do we do this? Why, Black people, do we refuse to embrace our God given skin, reject the image of beauty that has been stuffed down our throats and write our own definitions? It's the same with why we choose to "relax" our hair with products that cause blistering of the scalp, destruction of the hair and have been proven to be carcinogenic.

And for what? So that we can think we are actually beautiful while we destroy ourselves? To poison ourselves? When is it going to stop?

When we make it stop. When we choose to stop buying into the lies that only long straight hair, narrow noses, and fair skin are the standard of beauty, stop supporting these products, look in the mirror and tell ourselves and each other, every single day, that we were created in the image of God and God does not make garbage.

But you know what is garbage? Colorism. And Whitenicious. And Mercury. And anyone who wants to prey on the on the poor to pad their pockets.