Now she regrets it, she says, and has come into a lot of health related problems because of the skin bleaching. Marium would never encourage her daughters to chemically bleach their skin and she thinks it’s a problem that needs to be addressed more directly.

“We need to come together and call out the people who still think its a good idea, I don’t blame my mother of course, but we need to make sure that future generations don’t come under the same pressures.”

Why do people lighten their skin?

One of the reasons people chemically bleach their skin is because of the social privileges experienced by lighter skinned people of colour in wider society. In my community, a woman’s worth is inextricably tied into how she is perceived aesthetically. If the idealised look is several shades lighter than your natural skintone, using bleaching creams will seem like the only answer.

Often, if we see a person of colour in social spaces they previously did not have access to, we assume that boundaries have been lifted. However, this is not the case, if the said person of colour is lighter skinned then there is every chance that they benefited by pigmentocracy .

We only have to look in the entertainment industry to see there is a lack of representation of women of colour with darker skin tones. Beyonce’s father, Matthew Knowles commented on this in his interview with the magazine Ebony and highlighted how most of the world’s most recognised black female voices are all light skinned.

What is the solution?

Of course, there are quick ways we can address the problem of skin-bleaching, the easiest of which is this: make these products illegal. However, as we have seen proven time and time again by the ongoing abortion debate, outlawing something doesn’t necessarily make it any less common: it simply makes it less safe.

Rwanda has become the latest in a string of African countries to ban skin bleaching products, but Global Industry Analysts predict that the skin lightening industry will reach $31.2 billion by 2024, with Africa (followed closely by Asia and the Middle East) remaining the focus of these sales.

The skin bleaching epidemic: how can we put an end to toxic colourism in the UK?