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Why do women bleach? Understanding the rationale behind skin bleaching and the influence of media in promoting skin bleaching
Oberiri D. Apuke
Affiliation: Department of Mass Communication, Taraba State University, Jalingo.
Keywords: dvertisement, high status, skin bleaching, the entertainment industry, Women.
Categories: Humanities, Social Sciences and Law
Languages: English
This paper demonstrates the rationale behind skin bleaching and the influence of media in promoting skin bleaching. A narrative literature review was adopted as the design. Data sources included Google Scholar, Google, and the Scopus. The narrative review was conducted from July 2017 to November 2017. This study revealed that women engage in skin lightening because light skin is associated with higher status, privilege, and beauty, thus, women feel the need to bleach their skin to look beautiful and attract high-status mates. In the entertainment industry, music videos project white skin ladies more than the black ones. Thus, corporations manipulate audiences through advertising, making people believe that with lighter skin, they have more chances to succeed. Evidence from this paper demonstrates that the entertainment industry only portrays the “good” part of skin bleaching, completely hiding the dangerous part of it.