Tanzania: High Cost of Beauty

From This Day:

THE zeal to look beautiful and a colonial mentality that white skin is superior is fast driving Tanzanian women into their graves as they risk their lives by using skin lightening creams that in the end turn lethal.

The problem is not only confined to Tanzania as selling of whitening creams is a lucrative business in Africa worth millions of US dollars a year. In some countries that allow the use of these lethal substances, shelves in pharmacies are stacked high with lotions, creams and soaps all promising to make women whiter and supposedly more beautiful.

But, in countries like Tanzania, where the use and importation of skin lightening creams is banned, the business is thriving as these dangerous creams are smuggled into the country while dealers on the other hand are discrete.

So many women in Tanzania are regretting the days they laid hands on these creams as instead of attracting men, they are now scaring them away as they look like monsters with a lot of scratch marks and black dots on their skin after getting burnt by the creams. Some of them have been unlucky and had to pay the price the rest of their lives as they contracted skin cancers.