Nigerian makeup artist, Tennycoco has advised against skin bleaching stating that she did it and that she regrets it so much.
She shared side by side photos of herself from when she was bleaching
and now that she has returned to her normal dark skin colour on her IG
page and wrote;
My Road to Melanin
At the age of 19, I started lightening my skin….. By the time I was
20, I had become a heavy Skin bleacher… at the time it felt almost
normal, I felt like I looked more attractive….. it became an
addiction, I just couldn’t stop. I craved so much to be lighter.. I felt
being black wasn’t beautiful enough. What a stupid way to have
thought… I guess the society we live in played a little role in my
decision to bleach my skin… coupled with being very Naive at that age.
It’s widely perceived that the lighter you are, the more beautiful you
look. To be honest I always knew it was a bad thing… I mean, I had
seen loads of people with ridiculously damaged skin courtesy the effects
of bleaching but I was just so deep into it… like I said it’s
actually an addiction.As my 25th birthday started approaching I started to do a lot of Soul
searching, a lot of self evaluation… concerning every area of my life
and I finally started to see the light… to see how crazy I had been
all these years… how crazy it was for me to have believed that my
black skin wasn’t beautiful, to have allowed myself to feel inadequate
or to try and tell God ‘ how you created me isn’t good enough’ what a
silly, crazy way to have lived. Today I’m more than grateful that I
finally saw the light. Black is beautiful! So beautiful! Never have I
ever felt as beautiful and as at peace with my skin tone as I do now…
Please Love your skin/Yourself the way God has made you…. you are
beautiful, you are enough.Time will always tell… imagine how I would look 10-15 years from now
if I had continued to bleach my skin. Please don’t do it… I did it and
I Had/ have so much Regret… it’s not worth it. You are beautiful just
as you are.I get a lot of messages asking me, how I was able to transition my skin back… I will be sharing all the tips soon enough.
Thank you to everyone who helped me get through this…… the Amount of support I have received is enormous… Thank you.
