Dr. Winnifred Brown-Glaude is an inspirational figure and through her I could see a glimpse of what other Caribbean Americans experience. As a fellow Jamaican born, US immigrated New Yorker who also took a course on critical black studies to fill my credit and fell in love with the field, I found that her talk was a call to action. She drew particular attention to the way that Jamaica and other parts of the world explore colorism and body modifications.
In her talk, “Don’t Hate Me ‘Cause I’m Pretty: Blackness, Colorism, and the Bleached Body in Jamaica”, Dr. Brown-Glaude spoke about bleaching in Jamaica as a means of self building and remaking themselves into the neoliberal idea of race and melanin. She found that on first exploration many scholars see bleaching as self hatred, a rejection of one’s race and skin color. Dr. Brown-Glaude found that not many individuals who bleach do it because they dislike their race, but instead for chances at privilege which is normally awarded to those who are of a lighter skin tone. In Jamaica, being light-skinned was equal to a high elevation of profile and allowed individuals to gain an advantage in a colorist society.
Dr. Brown-Glaude spoke about the ways in which media, dancehall culture and Jamaican celebrities became catalysts for the popularity of skin bleaching. Specifically, she focused on artists like Vybz Kartel and Spice, two popular and longstanding celebrities in Jamaican dancehall culture. Spice was important to this point because her use of bleaching as a means of shocking her audience sensationalized the practice. She faced black lash, calls of insecurity, and overall shock while drawing the attention of her audience it also portrayed the hypocrisy of colorism in Jamaican dancehall culture. Spice’s ultimate goal was to bring awareness to her new song which had an underlying message about colorism, love for black skin and the hypocrisy behind colorism in Jamaica.
Dr. Brown-Glaude stated that bleaching is often seen as a type of mental illness. And while she’s not making the claim that it is entirely untrue she wanted to present an alternative reasoning as to why it occurs at such high rates and among youth. In many cases those who bleach face public backlash, while black women are celebrated and praised. However as a Jamaican myself, and from the points made by Dr. Brown-Glaude, I can say that this theory is only the surface of beauty standards, colorism and self expression. As Spice brought up, hypocrisy is dominant in these communities as they claim to support black melanin and hate on bleaching and also prefer to support the prioritization of lighter skin.
Dr. Brown-Glaude presents Vybz Kartel as a point of contention of how neoliberal capitalism can be used as a tool to understand flexibility that is cognitively and bodily absorbed to increase individuals’ market and value. She also used him as a means of black masculinity narratives which looked at bleaching as something strictly feminine. Public portrayal depicting bleaching as a feminine activity influenced the way in which Vybz Kartel combats the narrative. He turned to outwardly presenting his heteronormative masculinity and promulgating it through his music. To him, bleaching did not exist in a purely feminine or masculine sense; instead it existed as a form of body work allowing individuals to increase their marketability.
Dr. Brown-Glaude found other celebrities like Captain Barkley supported those who were bleaching as it was their choice. However he believed that bleaching should be done properly. He also supported the idea that women who bleach will still be attractive to men, and even more attractive than their “sisters” or darker Jamaicans. His problem was not the bleaching but the public who condemned them.
Ultimately, bleaching critics seem to ignore various other forms of body modification and fail to focus on what bleachers seek. Bleaching is a means of shock value to grab the attention of the audience and use that hold to brand the individual in the market. Prioritization of skin color over experience in the work place thus forces poorer Black people to bleach in order to fit the standard and climb societal ranks.
–Najwa Waysome