Meeting #11

Skin Bleaching

We watched the Tyra Banks' Episode of Black Women Bleaching their skin where there were 6 different women that described their reasoning for bleaching their skin. Most of the women have been bleaching their skin for multiple years.

Comments:
- 3 out of the 6 women were bleaching because of men and stated that they've experienced men wanting lighter skin women so they'd like to lighten there skin
- These women have low self esteem and it has nothing to do with how society views them
- Some of the women talked about the attention they got from now being lighter but back in school
when they were younger they didn't get the same attention as the light skin girls, but was it all about your shade of skin. Was the women heavy weight, was it the way the dark skinned girls were portrayed maybe as skanky or not skanky enough?
- Black No More by George S. Schuyler was a book that reminded someone of this topic
- The fact that we have so many different ways to change ourselves (surgeries, creams) that people don't have to love themselves anymore


Then we watched a part of a documentary A Girl Like Me
In the documentary it showed a study that they also used during the Brown vs. Education case in which they had black kids choose between a white baby doll and a black baby doll, stating which one is better. 19 out of the 21 kids choose the white doll.


- Some of us were only allowed to play with black dolls when they were younger
- Back in the day there weren't too many black dolls
- Someone was excited when the middle complexion doll, Teresa came out
- There was even a little boy in the video that preferred a white doll 
- It's a start
- Kids should be taught that both black dolls and white dolls are beautiful and good so that they can still play with both
- These parents as well may not have been educated like we're being educated now about these things so that when we have our kids we'll teach them but the kids in these video may not have that