Over the years I have grown accustomed to noticing a couple of actresses and I daresay some actors with what I call the three cardinal signs of bleaching; dark knuckles, dark brown spots on both cheeks and dark feet.

Nonetheless, in recent times this trend of bleaching among stars has steadily increased, and this of course has sparked some form of disapproval from some movie watchers.

However the question I would like it to ask here is; do they really deserve the criticism when it seems like the entertainment industry and our society idolize “whiteness or lightness?”

Before launching into my usual rant, it is important that I analyze this trend from different angles and not individualize it, but rather evaluate the general picture. The fact is, in most African societies, light-skinned individuals, especially women are perceived as attractive, intelligent and sexually more desirable.

The media in particular has contributed to this perception with its constant portrayal of “whiteness or lightness” as a symbol of beauty. Consequently setting or presenting light skin complexion as a standard for attractiveness and capability.

There is the need to place more emphasis on the self within and not the reflection in the mirror. Nonetheless, no matter how strong one’s sense of identity is and how much one embodies his or her ethnicity, the reality is that there are external influences one sometimes succumbs to either consciously or subconsciously.

Care to admit it or not most people have deeply-rooted self-esteem, self-image issues; this is not an issue to trivialize as it’s very real. It has been witnessed firsthand how damaging this could be to other women.

Women have damaged their skin by bleaching it with powerful chemicals to attract attention from the opposite sex. Beautiful smooth dark skinned women become caricatures of their old selves.

So before people start casting stones, it is important that they realize these stars’ predicament is analogous to that of a wife religiously bleaching to keep her husband from being snatched by his ugly-fat-light-skinned-mistress.

Don’t blame the bleaching stars, blame the entertainment industries. People can sit on their couch, point fingers and lash at them all they want, but at the end of the day, they are trying to appeal to viewers, trying to survive in an industry that glamorizes and gives preferential treatment to light skinned individuals, an industry in which looks supersede talent, an industry that is promoting this twisted ideology of “light skin” supremacy and has failed miserably to recognize that like a rainbow, beauty comes in different colors!

By Cassie Johnson/GhanaCelebrities.Com