My 234Next Article: What EXACTLY is your Colour?

I am a retail pharmacist and I have been for four years. That means that I get to see tens of clients everyday who want to receive medication for simple and sometimes not so simple ailments. 

I attend daily to the traffic induced headaches, children with runny noses and the never ending cough, men with requests for  instant libido enhancers. I enjoy my job. My clients serve as pleasant diversions to an otherwise tedious profession. Which is why I am tired of entertaining requests for creams that help maintain ‘my colour’.

What exactly is your colour? I once worked with a colleague who blurted out the not too discerning question to an elite client once. On being asked by this Remy hair wearing, bejewelled, Jimmy Choo bag carrying lady of fourty something years for a cream to help maintain her colour, my colleague did a quick once over of the lady and spotting the greenish yellow patch on her feet, the charcoal black spots on her knuckles and the Miranda orange peeking out from the mask of very fair MAC powder on her face and  just had to ask, “Which one, Ma?” Thankfully, the boss was not in earshot and the client had the grace to grin; batting her eyelids coquettishly.

What is it that you want? A total transformation from a Jonathan Goodluck shade to a Pat Utomi hue? I shudder to think! Although I’ve seen  a few people who have embarked on that journey and are now spending the remainder of their lives trying to avoid being found out through suspicious looking  potions that are surreptitiously transferred from Jimmy Choo bag to Blvgari bag and stern instructions to “carry am go fridge sharp sharp!”

We were born into this world with different melanin quotas;  God held back with the dose for some  but was overly  generous for the others. Now, why do you think that the fair colour is a better option for you? I‘ve heard a few answers to that question. The first being that men find fair ladies more attractive and that among a sea of suspects, detectives are more likely to believe a fair person. Now, now, let’s look at this critically. So you think your skin colour is your most marketable asset (not that I think we should market anything) that it has to be completely changed.  That  you have nothing else to bring to the table that the guy is just supposed to look at your splash of colours and think that this is the woman for me?   In the case of being a suspect;  now that’s a laugh,  are you planning to be bomb anywhere? If you aren’t , why should it matter if you’re fair or dark?

We’ve heard it countless times;  hydroquinone and all such mercury containing compounds increase the risk of skin cancer. Ok, something must kill someone, but isn’t it a bit unfair for people to lose you to skin cancer brought on by the use of unsafe products?  You haven’t heard that before? You want to be first?

Ok, ok, I’m being a bit too hard, but the thing pains me. Beautiful ladies with skin the colour that God gave them reducing themselves to objects of ridicule; their lives spent pursuing after the latest potions someone has cooked up, and I even heard those things are not cheap. There is a way out though, assuming you think like me that is. I am dark skinned, as in I use MAC NW50. Now that is dark I hear you say. Wetin person fit do?

When I am stressed out, I  do feel sometimes that my colour is a bit dull and  looks very ashy and pale. But I don’t try to become yellow;  I simply use  exfoliating scrubs and  face creams with alpha and beta hydroxyl  acids which are anti oxidants that keep your skin healthy. Vitamin C, lemon, oatmeal, granulated sugar are all homemade remedies that could be used to brighten the face. I also use sunscreens with an SPF of over 30 containing soy complex and natural light diffusers. What this does is brighten and cause light to reflect off my face, giving me a healthy, luminous  glow.  But when I tell clients that you don’t need any cream, that all you need is to slough off those dead skin cells to reveal your brightened hue, they just look at me like I’m crazy and go, eh, “let me first get my colour back!”

To talk more about the health hazards of these potions may be overly dramatic, but I know what I have seen in the way of a cream job gone bad; it’s a sorry sight and more often than not there’s no going back. You are beautiful just as you are,  abeg!  You no see Naomi Campbell?

This article was published on 234Next on the 29th of January in their Elan section. Photo credits : 234Next

My 234Next Debut: Madam, your hair is due!

On this cool Sunday evening, I had asked the stylist at a sleek saloon to wash and blow-dry my hair. I was going to fix a weave later. She inspected my hair as if she hadn’t quite seen such a mess before. Then, she spewed forth the words I always dread: “Madam, your hair don due oh!”

The words stung, not only because I had just retouched my hair the weekend before, but also because I had used the almighty, supposed miracle potion--Dr Miracle. That thing isn’t cheap! But I wasn’t upset at her for saying that because my hair certainly looked quite due--or at least totally lacking in that characteristic shine and limpness of the ultra modern perm.

My dilemma dates back to 12 years ago, when I first became acquainted with relaxer crèmes. I was in SS2 in Queen’s College, Lagos, and I couldn’t quite get over the envy I felt for all the other ‘modern girls’ in my class who had perms even as far back as primary school. But as my MFM-congregant father would say, all such things as perms are ‘ephemeral’ and not worthy of a virtuous woman’s consideration (he has come a long way since then and can even now be seen wearing shorts!) That particular doctrine went over my head and it took a lot of playful haranguing and behind-the-scenes debating by my mother (of blessed memory) for my father to succumb to my plea for a perm.

OK, I don’t know that he succumbed; just know that my mother gave me a cup of TCB and some money for a saloon visit when I was returning to boarding house. That day marked my induction into the world of scalp combustion, short circuited relaxation processes, hair breakages, and the weekly whisper of “Madam, your hair don due” from hair stylists all over Lagos (I have met many).

My hair is Pure African hair; my hair strands love to stay curled up and they do not particularly enjoy being stretched out and lying limp. When I first shocked them with the contents of that initial TCB cup, they obliged me by coming out of their shell to say hello, but since then--and we are counting 12 years--they stay limp only for a few days after relaxing, and return to their original state as if rushing back to an interrupted meeting. Even after I became a member of that perm clique, my friends never stopped commenting on how the hairs at my back always ‘takoko’d’ like ‘robo robo chewing gum’. I usually reacted by asking the stylist whenever I retouched my hair, to apply much more crème to that back. “Put more! Put more!” I would scream. But of course you can imagine the results. Massive first degree burns. Oh, the price I’ve paid for this clique!

Though I’m grateful to Garett Augustus Morgan , the African American who in the 19th century discovered the effect of alkaline relaxers on the hair protein structure by weakening its internal bonds and causing the natural curls to loosen out, I can’t help but think that my hair’s protein structure has only gotten stronger and more resilient by the years. From the lye cream once available, to the no-lye creams, to the kits requiring guanidine carbonate activators, I have tried all and stayed true to all the countless precautions on the fanciful packaging.

Some of my friends with hair more permeable to crème have advised me to stick to one particular product (I used Dark &Lovely for six years running), to try this or that. The latest was Dr Miracle and Profectiv (they did work but two weeks after, I was back to square one).

I am now officially frustrated but still not frustrated enough to abandon relaxers completely. I did try a few months ago to grow back my natural hair, claiming a desire to express my Pan-Africanism but it was merely a cloak for my relaxer incompatibility. However, this didn’t work because I was back to my saloon with a new kit of ‘Super’ Dr Miracle and a sour pout.

I’m in a cross betwixt two, coping with the coarseness of my African hair and not quite being able to bid goodbye to hair relaxers (lye or no-lye). I do not know what I might do to the next stylist who tells me, “Madam, your hair don due” when the hair should be anything but due.

No other Naija phrase (sorry, Aunty Dora) quite captures my frustration like this one: I HAVE TIRE!