You remember Sammy Peralta Sosa, right? The powerful baseball player who slugged for the Chicago Cubs and more recently the Texas Rangers, has been coming around looking more like an albino lately, than the proud dark skinned hunk he was celebrated to be all his life, coming from the Dominican Republic as he does. Sammy Sosa claims that he just used skin care products to soften his skin, and as it happens, he didn't read the label properly. The creams he used just went and bleached his skin as well. Any cosmetics and skin care products store in any city in the country is likely to carry a selection of products with names like Fair & White or Hyprogel that promise to brighten your skin. If you didn't guess, that is the euphemism they use for skin bleaching. There is a lot of money in this kind of business too; all over the world, darker skinned women use these skin lightening creams and lotions as a way to raise their social standing. Lighter skin goes with better respect in most places in the world, and also in the USA.
Latinos and African-Americans here often complain of how they are the objects of disrespect even from fellow members of their own community who happen to have somewhat lighter skin than they do. They even say that Barack Obama, if he happen to not be the lighter skinned African-American that he is, might not have been elected by the country. With this much irrationality in the air over the subject of skin tone, things do look ripe for a lot of commercial exploitation; and you can bet that there is plenty. The skin care products on sale at any of the smaller ethnic cosmetics stores in any city will offer you a selection of potions from Germany, France, Korea and Africa that promise the world.
These products do not really come with a proper regulation label of ingredients or an FDA certification. Whether these say so or not, these are chock-full with clobetasol propionate, the industrial-strength steroid, and also mercury. Basically, these products are completely illegal. Dermatologists say that they cause everything from high blood pressure, artificial stretch marks, sexual disorders and cancers to nervous system damage. It isn't just women who want to be whiter who use these. The use of some birth control pills can give you brown patches on the skin, a condition they call melasma. And regular women who are happy with their skin tone, sometimes turn to these skin care products too.
If the government is aware of this, they don't show it. They must consider this a kind of back alley business that isn't mainstream enough for them to pay attention to. But at all these shops in every city of the country, this is their best selling product. A lot of these products, since they are the back alley kind, are downright counterfeits that plainly lie about their contents on the label. The dermatologists would have you keep away from these altogether. When you buy these, it is like you're actually shopping from a third world country with no health regulations. To some people, Sammy Sosa might not be the alarming warning the dermatologists see him to be against whitening skin care products. He might actually be a great motivation and inspiration. And that is where it becomes really scary.