A few weeks ago, I went for my own ‘friend’ actress Juliet Ibrahim’s head for the fact that she was proudly advertising for a bleaching cream-Carotone as their poster girl in Ghana.
In the said article, I mentioned that “You wouldn’t catch anyone selling a cream with the words ‘Skin Bleaching’ anymore and this is because, we’ve aggressively tainted this phrase, killing the business around those two words.
However, the desperate and shrewd manufactures have adopted various industry synonymous and as such, today’s bleaching creams are inconspicuously called ‘Skin Whitening’, ‘Skin Brightening’, ‘Skin Toning’, ‘Skin Lightening’ ‘Skin Polishing’ and sometimes ‘Skin Flourishing.’
It’s a smart disguise but mostly, the ingredients remain the same and commonly found in these creams is; hydroquinone. “In human medicine, hydroquinone is used as a topical application in skin whitening to reduce the color of skin. This use is banned in some countries, including the member states of the European Union under Directive 76/768/EEC:1976.”