Why lighter skin is an international obsession

WATCH DR. NICHOLAS LOWE DISCUSS SKIN LIGHTENING TRENDS IN EUROPE

As shocking as the pictures of a new, lighter Sammy Sosa may be, the popularity and use of skin lightening creams in Europe is no surprise -- part of a booming business in skin rejuvenation products. At least 20 percent of Europe's 250 million people are minority, and in Britain, Asians and Afro-Caribbeans make up 14 percent of the country's 68 million people. They make up part of a market in Europe alone worth at least $200 million, dermatologists say.

Besides the obvious need for creams to treat aging and discoloration of skin caused by acne and freckles, it's the demand to lighten skin only for vanity and cosmetic reasons that hits a raw nerve -- as striking as a Sammy Sosa homer.

At the Aquarius Hair and Beauty Salon in north London, for example, there is zero tolerance for lightening and bleaching skins. For Sharon Parry, the salon's Jamaican owner, it's a matter of respect and common sense. "It's not a good thing to use. If it's because you think your skin is lighter, that will make you better and more successful -- and also the chemicals," she said. She points out that, no matter how frequently the creams are used, you'll never become truly "white" or "light."

"You can always tell (they're using it) because the knuckles on their hands and feet never change," Parry said. "Also, they look ghostlike. Their appearance looks gray and dull, especially if they're dark-skinned people. In Jamaica, if we see someone like that, we call them 'duppy' (which means ghost)."

When Marian Ogeto, who's from Kenya, showed us her hands and feet, the discoloration was obvious. Despite using the cream daily for three months, applying it from head to toe, her knuckles retained their original color. But still, a jar of cocoa butter, costing her no more than $6.50, containing chemicals including mercury, had already done the damage. "When I tried to get a tan to get my color back, it didn't come back," Ogeto said.

Tofa, who we also spoke with, runs a store called "Gucci Mama" in a bustling market in south London, centered in a neighborhood that is mostly African. She's from Kenya, and as she proudly noted, has been using a variety of lightening creams for the past 15 years. While her face is smooth and evenly fair, her hands and feet are still much darker shades.

Eden Teckle, who also works at the Aquarius salon, is from Eritrea and explains that the popularity for lightening creams shouldn't be applied to Africans overall. She feels people from countries such as Gambia, Senegal, and the Congo are "addicted" to bleaching creams.

"I was shocked when I went to a concert (in London) and the group was from the Congo, and everyone in the group had bleached their skin," Teckle recalled. Again, the telltale signs were the knuckles on their hands, and also their lips, whose color remained the same. "Their whole face looked like a blister," she said. Teckle believes the lightening reflects a mentality of people having nothing to show for their lives, but still wanting to show status.

She described the members of the group from Congo as having a "designer mentality -- their Gucci shoes, Louis Vuitton bags, Jean Paul Gautier clothes, and horribly looking bleached skin, but nothing else."

That same mentality is found in the Caribbean amongst Jamaican "Yardies" - a slang tem originally referring to people from the government yards in Trenchtown, which was originally built as a housing project and became known for its high crime rate. "Look at the Yardie girls," Parry said, "The long hair extensions, false nails, long eyelash extensions, and bleached skin."

And aside from a sense of what is defined as status, Teckle also explained that the look of bleached skin is part of a calculation that is made when it comes to finding the right partner. "Your mother tells you when you're growing up, you wont get a husband because you're dark." In Kenya, she noted, "Even those who were already light, wanted to be more light. They wanted to get an Arab man, rather than a mixed Swahili."

The pressure to find the right partner and successful job is even more rigidly adhered to in the Asian communities. A casual search of skin cream commercials on Arab TV channels yields a barrage of ads that are blunt in their assumptions. You won't find dates, you won't get a better job, and you won't even like yourself -- unless you have lighter skin. One ad even guaranteed results in four weeks.

The magazines we saw in the predominantly Asian neighborhood of London called Southall featured only ads showing near-white models. When I called the editor of the biggest Asian magazine in London to ask why only fair or near-white models were used, she admitted that this was already a well-documented complaint. The BBC was also probing them about the practice, and she had nothing else to say.

Unfortunately an obsession with changing skin color can go much further. A recent documentary airing on Britain's Channel 4, "Bleach, Nip, Tuck: The White Beauty Within," suggested that there is now a movement of "global de-racialization," where surgeons can change your identity. "Longer legs, less body hair, a Caucasian nose, wider eyes," were some of the examples they feature. A crying Asian woman says, "I dream about how to look white, how to become white, how to look white and beautiful."

And then there's Jet, a black valley-girl sounding model who doesn't like her nose. Michael Jackson is her role model. She says, "I can understand why Michael Jackson wants to get rid of the typical black nose, because in order to fit into European society, you've got to get rid of the black nose and that's what he did." She then tells her radio listeners, "I want a straighter more European nose, because if I smile, my nose goes wide."

African-Americans have a long history of "passing" -- meaning the (white) public would assume that they are Caucasian. My mother explains that in the days of segregation to "pass" was simply a means to getting a better job, go to a better school, or have a better life. Some feel there are remnants of this ideology in an identity crisis within black society. Fair-skinned celebrities that many see as a new barometer of being attractive -- Beyonce, Rihanna, or Leona Lewis -- leave some African-Americans looking in the mirror and not seeing natural beauty.

WATCH MORE ABOUT INTERNATIONAL TRENDS IN SKIN LIGHTENING FROM NBC'S MICHELLE KOSINSKI