Skin whitening cream - Is is healthy? Is it moral?
91- 2patricias
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We use Google Ads on our website (www.looklovely.net) which are fed to the site according to contens. We are happy with these ads at least 98% of the time, but we are concerned about ads for skin whitening cream. As a result, we use the facility that allows us to block these ads.
Our concerns are based on two things. The first of these is moral/ethical. It feels wrong to us to promote the idea that there is anything wrong with skin that is not snow white! In fact, we think all colours of skin can be lovely.
Our second worry is that these creams may have ill effects on skin if used over a period of time.
We would really like to know what other Hubbers think about the ethics of skin whitening creams.
We would also like to learn of any personal experience, or knowledge about the long term effects.
Thanks.Not for it. Especially for the women - I like my women to have the dark mocha skin color. And the jet black hair.
99- Mark Knowles
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I never even heard of this. Not sure why anyone would buy it either.
But if people buy diet pills and penis enlargement creams and teeth whitener and hair implants and cosmetic surgery and butt implants and botox treatments and cosmetics tested on animals etc, I am sure they are dumb enough to buy that too
Mark Knowles wrote:
I never even heard of this. Not sure why anyone would buy it either.
But if people buy diet pills and penis enlargement creams and teeth whitener and hair implants and cosmetic surgery and butt implants and botox treatments and cosmetics tested on animals etc, I am sure they are dumb enough to buy that tooLOL, yeah good point! PT Barnum once said no one ever got poor by underestimating the intelligence of the American public.
85- MrMarmalade
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doncarlin wrote:
Mark Knowles wrote:
I never even heard of this. Not sure why anyone would buy it either.
But if people buy diet pills and penis enlargement creams and teeth whitener and hair implants and cosmetic surgery and butt implants and botox treatments and cosmetics tested on animals etc, I am sure they are dumb enough to buy that tooLOL, yeah good point! PT Barnum once said no one ever got poor by underestimating the intelligence of the American public.
100% agreement with you Mark
I do not know what the complaint is. There is no reason offered that it may harm you. Well no proof offered.
Why the comment?
94- Marisa Wright
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I don't think we can judge whether they're moral or not, but I do know that some skin whitening creams can be very damaging to the skin.
When I lived in Africa, they were marketed everywhere, and a lot of them were made by shonky companies and had very harsh bleaches in them. The burns they left went deep into the dermis so women were left with nasty scars.
Here in Australia they would never be approved for sale, and I imagine the same would apply in America and Europe. The skin whitening lotions sold by the big cosmetic companies are fairly mild (and in fact, probably don't do much!)- 91
- 2patricias
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Mark Knowles wrote:
I never even heard of this. Not sure why anyone would buy it either.
But if people buy diet pills and penis enlargement creams and teeth whitener and hair implants and cosmetic surgery and butt implants and botox treatments and cosmetics tested on animals etc, I am sure they are dumb enough to buy that tooThanks for putting our concerns in context! Of course when one looks at the whole cosmetics/ semi-pharaceutical market there are 100s, probably 1000s, of products that could be questioned. It could be argued that the entire industry is based on vanity!
That leads on to deeper questions: who drives the vanity? And who profits? - 91
- 2patricias
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Marisa Wright wrote:
I don't think we can judge whether they're moral or not, but I do know that some skin whitening creams can be very damaging to the skin.
When I lived in Africa, they were marketed everywhere, and a lot of them were made by shonky companies and had very harsh bleaches in them. The burns they left went deep into the dermis so women were left with nasty scars.
Here in Australia they would never be approved for sale, and I imagine the same would apply in America and Europe. The skin whitening lotions sold by the big cosmetic companies are fairly mild (and in fact, probably don't do much!)Thank you Marisa for the interesting information about Africa. And it is reassuring that the products sold by the big companies are fairly mild.
79- balletomanehk
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I don't know much about the ill effects of whitening facial creams -- I have heard about those bleaching ones that Marisa talked about, but not enough about the milder ones. All I can say is that they are extremely prevalent in Asia. The trend seemed to have started in Japan a decade or two ago and spread all over the place. Where I live -- Hong Kong -- almost all major cosmetic brands carry the whitening line. People are obsessed about not getting any freckles on their skin, and have an exaggerated imagination of the damage that the sun can do. Of course the ozone layer is getting thinner over our polluted city, but still, I'm talking about people who wear a visor that covers the whole face on a fairly cloudy day, and "vampires" who draw the curtains whenever there is a bit of sun breaking out. Luckily my husband, who is from the Nordics, prefer me with my freckles, so I get to save a lot of money, lol! Well, from a sociological point of view, I think whitening creams carry the connotation that being fair-skinned is preferable, which raises the issue of racial discrimination on a deep, subconscious level.
- 91
- 2patricias
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Thank you for contributing such interesting information. I had no idea skin whitening creams were so prevelant in other parts of the world! The obsession with avoiding the sun could carry another health risk, namely calcium deficiency. The body needs Vitamin D to absorb dietary calcium - and sunshine is the best source of Vitamin D.
The strange thing is that in many parts of the Western World, many people feel compelled to develop a sun tan - sometimes with unhappy consquences. I think the fashion is gradually changing, but for many years having very pale skin was considered unattractive! - 91
- 2patricias
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MrMarmalade wrote:
doncarlin wrote:
Mark Knowles wrote:
I never even heard of this. Not sure why anyone would buy it either.
But if people buy diet pills and penis enlargement creams and teeth whitener and hair implants and cosmetic surgery and butt implants and botox treatments and cosmetics tested on animals etc, I am sure they are dumb enough to buy that tooLOL, yeah good point! PT Barnum once said no one ever got poor by underestimating the intelligence of the American public.
100% agreement with you Mark
I do not know what the complaint is. There is no reason offered that it may harm you. Well no proof offered.
Why the comment?We asked the question about whether skin whitening products are harmful because we have no idea how they work. Also, some of those we have seen advertised are made by companies we have not heard of previously.
Of course, there could be no health hazards at all - but there must be Hubbers with more knowledge. This is a very wide community. - 79
- balletomanehk
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2patricias wrote:
The obsession with avoiding the sun could carry another health risk, namely calcium deficiency. The body needs Vitamin D to absorb dietary calcium - and sunshine is the best source of Vitamin D.
You are absolutely right about that! There is a general ignorance about the benefits of the sun but nobody seems to care about that. And when people get bone diseases such as osteoporosis, they wouldn't stop to think that it has anything to do with the lack of exposure to the sun.
I guess it is true that what we don't have, we crave, and what we have, we avoid! Because of the relative abundance of sunshine here, people take it for granted and want to go the other extreme of avoiding it. By contract, in parts of Europe and North America where the sun is not so abundant, for example, people tend to go to the extreme of getting sun tans artificially by visiting sun tan parlors or using sun tan lotions. For some reason, I think of skin whitening as being harsh as its actually bleaching the skin , but the bronzers which darken skin as being less harmless... I use bronzers on occasion on my legs and a little on my face during the summer.
- 94
- Marisa Wright
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I agree with you that people underestimate the importance of sunlight, but you can understand their reaction in some countries.
Skin cancer is the most common form of cancer in Australia. You are more likely to get skin cancer than lung cancer, breast cancer, bowel cancer etc and it is just as likely to kill you. So it's hardly surprising if some people react by shutting out the sun altogether!
In recent years, we've seen schools insist on children wearing legionnaire-type hats (peaked caps with a long flap at the back) and long sleeves whenever they play outside. Kids wear rash suits (like wetsuits but lycra instead of neoprene) when they go swimming. And I can't remember the last time I saw a woman out with a stroller where I could actually see the baby - there always seems to be a blanket or coverlet thrown over the opening (I always think it must be like a sauna underneath...).
I do think it has gone too far, because now we are starting to see, for the first time in generations, children presenting with symptoms of Vitamin D deficiency. There must be a middle ground somewhere! - derekcaulfield
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Marisa Wright wrote:
I agree with you that people underestimate the importance of sunlight, but you can understand their reaction in some countries.
Skin cancer is the most common form of cancer in Australia. You are more likely to get skin cancer than lung cancer, breast cancer, bowel cancer etc and it is just as likely to kill you. So it's hardly surprising if some people react by shutting out the sun altogether!
In recent years, we've seen schools insist on children wearing legionnaire-type hats (peaked caps with a long flap at the back) and long sleeves whenever they play outside. Kids wear rash suits (like wetsuits but lycra instead of neoprene) when they go swimming. And I can't remember the last time I saw a woman out with a stroller where I could actually see the baby - there always seems to be a blanket or coverlet thrown over the opening (I always think it must be like a sauna underneath...).
I do think it has gone too far, because now we are starting to see, for the first time in generations, children presenting with symptoms of Vitamin D deficiency. There must be a middle ground somewhere!I agree with you bigtime, we need sunlight, just don't spend hours lying in the sun especially unprotected and you'll be alright
91- quotations
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2patricias wrote:
We use Google Ads on our website (www.looklovely.net) which are fed to the site according to contens. We are happy with these ads at least 98% of the time, but we are concerned about ads for skin whitening cream. As a result, we use the facility that allows us to block these ads.
Our concerns are based on two things. The first of these is moral/ethical. It feels wrong to us to promote the idea that there is anything wrong with skin that is not snow white! In fact, we think all colours of skin can be lovely.
Our second worry is that these creams may have ill effects on skin if used over a period of time.
We would really like to know what other Hubbers think about the ethics of skin whitening creams.
We would also like to learn of any personal experience, or knowledge about the long term effects.
Thanks.I assume Michael Jackson must have used some product like this. And we all know how he ended up. So I vote block those ads from your site and maybe you can save someone from becoming a bleached circus freak.
- 91
- 2patricias
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Marisa Wright wrote:
I agree with you that people underestimate the importance of sunlight, but you can understand their reaction in some countries.
Skin cancer is the most common form of cancer in Australia. You are more likely to get skin cancer than lung cancer, breast cancer, bowel cancer etc and it is just as likely to kill you. So it's hardly surprising if some people react by shutting out the sun altogether!
In recent years, we've seen schools insist on children wearing legionnaire-type hats (peaked caps with a long flap at the back) and long sleeves whenever they play outside. Kids wear rash suits (like wetsuits but lycra instead of neoprene) when they go swimming. And I can't remember the last time I saw a woman out with a stroller where I could actually see the baby - there always seems to be a blanket or coverlet thrown over the opening (I always think it must be like a sauna underneath...).
I do think it has gone too far, because now we are starting to see, for the first time in generations, children presenting with symptoms of Vitamin D deficiency. There must be a middle ground somewhere!Skin cancer is increasing in the United Kingdom, and some say this is linked to the increased number of foreign holidays. One of us (2Patricias) is originally from the USA, and has had incidence of skin cancer in the family. So we know that it a dreadful disease.
If only everyone would accept the need for moderation! - 94
- Marisa Wright
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2patricias wrote:
Skin cancer is increasing in the United Kingdom, and some say this is linked to the increased number of foreign holidays.
You're right, and the foreign holidays probably are to blame. Malignant skin cancer is linked more to sunBURN than sunTAN, so it stands to reason that if crazy Brits get off the plane and straight on to the beach to bake to a crisp, they must be putting themselves at risk. (BTW I can call them crazy Brits because I am one - a Brit, that is, or at least an ex-one).
79- geetanjali
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2patricias wrote:
We use Google Ads on our website (www.looklovely.net) which are fed to the site according to contens. We are happy with these ads at least 98% of the time, but we are concerned about ads for skin whitening cream. As a result, we use the facility that allows us to block these ads.
Our concerns are based on two things. The first of these is moral/ethical. It feels wrong to us to promote the idea that there is anything wrong with skin that is not snow white! In fact, we think all colours of skin can be lovely.
Our second worry is that these creams may have ill effects on skin if used over a period of time.
We would really like to know what other Hubbers think about the ethics of skin whitening creams.
We would also like to learn of any personal experience, or knowledge about the long term effects.
Thanks.Fairness creams sell in countries where people are predominantly dark skinned, but aspire towards lighter complexions. Their very basis is wrong. They are also very bad for the skin. I read that there can be no fairness cream without skin-bleaching agents such as hydroquinone, steroids, mercury salts, and a number of other ingredients, including bismuth subnitrate, hydrogen peroxide, magnesium peroxide and zinc peroxide -- all of which have negative effects. These range from irritation, allergies and sun sensitivity to even cancer!
- 91
- 2patricias
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geetanjali wrote:
2patricias wrote:
We use Google Ads on our website (www.looklovely.net) which are fed to the site according to contens. We are happy with these ads at least 98% of the time, but we are concerned about ads for skin whitening cream. As a result, we use the facility that allows us to block these ads.
Our concerns are based on two things. The first of these is moral/ethical. It feels wrong to us to promote the idea that there is anything wrong with skin that is not snow white! In fact, we think all colours of skin can be lovely.
Our second worry is that these creams may have ill effects on skin if used over a period of time.
We would really like to know what other Hubbers think about the ethics of skin whitening creams.
We would also like to learn of any personal experience, or knowledge about the long term effects.
Thanks.Fairness creams sell in countries where people are predominantly dark skinned, but aspire towards lighter complexions. Their very basis is wrong. They are also very bad for the skin. I read that there can be no fairness cream without skin-bleaching agents such as hydroquinone, steroids, mercury salts, and a number of other ingredients, including bismuth subnitrate, hydrogen peroxide, magnesium peroxide and zinc peroxide -- all of which have negative effects. These range from irritation, allergies and sun sensitivity to even cancer!
That list of potential ingredients is startling! I wonder if the labels on these products contain a warning about increased risk of sun burn?
