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For shame of for style?
By By Cedriann J Martin
http://www.trinidadexpress.com/woman-ma ... 21984.html
Story Created: Apr 9, 2011 at 12:38 AM ECT
Story Updated: Apr 9, 2011 at 12:38 AM ECT
"The gyal and them love out me bleach out face," Vybz Kartel boasts in the self-aggrandising Look pon we. In another taunting track he croons: "Gyal… say me look cool (light skinned), like me wash me face with de cake soap (blue soap)."
Yessir. The dancehall artiste that, ten to one, your teenager is pumping on his iPod, is boasting about having gone from dark chocolate to a brownish, grayish hue complete with raccoon eyes and smoker's lips. He allegedly accomplished this chick-magnet complexion through the combined forces of laundry detergent and air conditioning. We all know that's improbable but when have performing artistes ever been an honest race?
I've been taken with the prolific Jamaican star, songwriter and businessman ever since I got wind of his University of the West Indies, Mona lecture last month. Armed with a PowerPoint presentation and an unending appetite for controversy he defended his skin-lightening by channeling Haile Selassie: 'Until the colour of a man's skin is of no more significance than the colour of his eyes….' In an interview with JA's Entertainment Report late last year he shrugged smugly: "black people lightening their skin to me is tantamount to white people getting a suntan."
It's a tricky and often futile job questioning people's motives. Kartel says he wanted to make his skin "a living, breathing canvas" and thought his tattoos didn't pop during his darker days. Plus he gets a kick out of shock and awe. He's stated that his decision to go lighter has nothing to do with shame or race. Women who straighten their tightly-coiled curls or stitch in locks shorn off unknown Indians' heads might be doing so for convenience or variety. Or they might have a fundamental discomfort with their naturally occurring kink. Which is it? Well that depends partly on the person and partly on the value we collectively place on light skin and "good" hair.
Kartel paints a picture of a more evolved African diaspora for which these shifts are purely a matter of aesthetics.
"Bleaching today doesn't mean the same as bleaching 25 years ago," he said at UWI. "We are a much prouder race who know that we can do what we want as far as style is concerned."
I wish that were true to the extent he submits. The whole put-milk-in-your-coffee mentality is so painfully old. But you still hear people going to great lengths to dilute or distance themselves from their blackness. It manifests in a thousand little ways—overly reverent mention of your "Spanish" great grandmother and cooing over babies with straight noses or "red" skin. And I'm not just talking about African people here. I've heard enough stories about Indians and bleaching creams to know that there's something of a universal value placed on lighter skin, particularly for women.
Men wanting to be lighter is new to me. Whatever for? In his foreword to Peter Frost's 2005 Fair Women, Dark Men, sociologist Pierre van den Berghe states that across cultures many people are either "indifferent to male pigmentation or even prefer men to be darker". To the Afro-Trinidadian male skin bleaching might sound unnecessary and extreme—a far harder sell than Gaza/Gully violence, apparently. But what are his attitudes to skin colour? Does he value one type of woman more than another? Are we still lugging around insecurities? Are we still rewarding lighter skin with everything from jobs to love?
He's a cynical one, that Kartel. To a business empire that includes everything from a line of rum to a condom named "Daggering", he now adds the Vybz cake soap. His job has nothing to do with black pride or health or empowerment and everything to do with persuading people to part with their money.
There's one point on which Kartel and I agree. He's nobody's role model. And if you're worried about the effects of either his skin-bleaching or his intensely witty and rhythmic brand of misogyny on your children, it's time to begin having open, honest conversations with them about who and what they're listening to lest backward ideas fester uninterrupted for another 25 years.
Bizzare wrote:Who cares.......No really, whats the big fuss about?
I saw the title and thought:
Bizzare wrote:Who cares.......No really, whats the big fuss about?
I saw the title and thought:
Bizzare wrote:You guys have no clue...carry on with your Em ft Kartel collaboration
ruffneck_12 wrote:Bizzare wrote:You guys have no clue...carry on with your Em ft Kartel collaboration
it bad eh boidanboidawgboi
jm3 wrote:will he stay like that?
Bizzare wrote:Kartel gonna curl/straighten his hair soon and sing about wearing false eyelashes. Then distinguishing between male and female gonna be a bit more difficult in the new wing ah Trincity mall.
sMASH wrote: them yutes gonna follow dat too.
*
UML wrote:
sharkman121 wrote:dancehall just aint wat it used to be.....sigh. i feel sorry for this generation.
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