Nneka laughed out loud as she logged into Instagram that morning. January was barely 3 weeks old, yet it felt like the new year was already 6 months old. Everybody had agreed not to “gree for anybody” without any prior meeting and some other people were tensioning people over matters of the heart. Nigerians were wonderful people, humour seemed to be a good way to cope with the stress of rising inflation.
She sobered up a bit as she caught up with the trending romantic news, and she remembered the bad break-up she had suffered from before God brought her an angel in human form.
She had met Emma at the office end-of-year party a couple of years ago. He worked with another multinational company and had accompanied his friend to the party. They had been introduced and before the end of the evening, had exchanged phone numbers and soon, a relationship blossomed.
It wasn’t long before she noticed that Emma had a soft spot for other women, especially very light-skinned ones. When she confronted him about it, he had told her that in his culture, very light skin was an indication of affluence and it showed that the woman was well taken care of.
Nneka could at best be described as being a light chocolate colour, but she eventually caved in to pressure to keep her relationship. As Instagram was her go-to market-place, she easily found a vendor of fast-action skin lightening creams and she bought herself a set. Finally, she would now be the colour that Emma wanted her to be, and he would stop cheating on her.
Everything went on well until 6 months later when she went for a routine check at the hospital and her blood pressure was flagged. There was nobody in her family with hypertension and her lifestyle was quite healthy. It was with much digging that her family physician told her to take a break from the skincare products she was using.
Within a month, her high blood pressure had started improving. However, as her health stabilized, her relationship took a turn for the worse. Emma was clearly displeased with her skin reverting back to a darker shade and told her clearly that he wasn’t sure he wanted to continue with the relationship.
As devastated as she was, she also knew that she wasn’t going to jeopardise her health to please Emma or any man for that matter, so she also agreed to the discontinuation of the relationship. She knew she needed both emotional and physical healing, so while she was seeing her physician, she also registered for mental health therapy sessions.
The question she would ask herself later as she recovered emotionally was why she had agreed to put herself in harm’s way just because she wanted to be in the relationship with Emma. As she healed, she discovered that she’d had issues with low self-esteem and a poor self-image. Thankfully, all that was in the past now and she knew that her next relationship would be a healthy one because she had become self-aware.
One of the lies Emma had kept feeding her with was that men preferred very light-skinned women, and at the point of their break-up had mocked her that she’d never get a guy as good as him.
Imagine her utter delight when she met Dave a few months later at the gym where she worked out. She had asked his help with one of the machines and he replied, “sure thing, Ebony princess.”
Wow. She whom Emma had called ugly because of her skin colour was being called ‘Ebony princess’. She found it very interesting that the very thing that had caused the break-up of her previous relationship was the attraction for Dave. She finally accepted his ‘toasting’ and was having the very best time of her life, with a wedding in view in a couple of months.
Many women have fallen into the trap of skin lightening for different reasons. The best way to develop confidence in the colour of your skin is by building a strong and resilient self-worth and self-image. Every woman who does this will be beautiful and make the healthiest choices for herself.
