You must suffer to be beautiful. Ivorian women seem to take this old proverb a little too literally … Fashion effect, personal taste, or constraints imposed by their husbands, women very often have recourse to depigmentation of the skin.
This practice is however as dangerous as it is widespread. To achieve bleaching of their skin, women (but also more and more men) use strippers that weaken their skin. Not only do these products cause white spots, patches of pimples, scars and cancer, but it is also the risk of diabetes, renal failure or even hypertension which increases with each application of these lotions.
But why do this to yourself? “It is the men who push women to become clear,” Marie-Grâce Amani told AFP. What the Ivorian Minister of Health, Raymonde Goudou Coffie confirms: Ivorians “love women who shine at night!” she explains to the news agency with irony.
A government that wants to crack down
The Ivorian government adopted a decree at the end of April banning these depigmentation products. In the line of sight, those containing mercury(or its derivatives), corticosteroids or hydroquinone above 2%. The latter product is a bleaching agent, banned in Europe because of its stripping effect.
But despite this decree, adopted without dispute in the Council of Ministers, whitening products continue to flourish in beauty salons and Ivorian stores with evocative names: “Body white” (white body), “Dynamiclair”, “Glow and white” (Glow and white) …
The second step for the government will be to withdraw these banned products from the market. A national evaluation and marketing authorization committee has been set up to ensure the proper application of the measures. Tickets are also provided for offenders ranging from 50,000 to 350,000 CFA francs (ie 76 to 534 euros).
But for the moment, in the absence of an implementing decree, the products remain, just like the quest for whiteness, and brightened faces appear on many billboards. Asked by AFP, Prof. Elidjé Ekra, from the dermatology department of a university hospital in Abidjan, deplores that we “always see women on national television subscribing to cleaning products” before wondering: “Do those who embody the State respect the measure?”.
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