www.voueeskin.com
Intro:
Black. Don't crack, but it does though. . Look at me. Mommy. I'm strong. I'm beautiful. I'm strong, I'm beautiful. I’m black.I'm beautiful, I'm black.
Intro music.
Nina:
Hey y’all. Welcome to the Every Shade Podcast. I am Nina, and today is a beautiful autumn day in Hong Kong. The sun is out with slightly polluted bluish skies, and we're talking about the myths around melanated skin. Another such and such things that people say or maybe they don't say, but they definitely think. So crack here basically means wrinkle, and I wish that was the only sign of aging, but people get spots, they get veins, they get sagging. When I first moved to Asia, though, the number one misconception or the number one thought that people had around my skin wasn't that it didn't crack right? Y'all know that people of Asian heritage also show aging differently from Caucasian skin.
Like, are you 16 or are you 36? Right. So it's not really top of their list. When they saw me, the first thing I noticed was this association of darker skin tones with a, a toughness, a roughness. And that's about as PC as I can say. And so when random people would touch me, or asked to touch me, they'd be like, oh, so smooth, like they were stroking a pelt hanging from a hook.
Nevermind the actual madness of just touching a random person, pre covid. But there was this genuine look of shock. There was this one lady that was particularly shocked that I didn't rub off. The color didn't come off. Needless to say, we haven't seen her since. All you have to do is think about some of the terminology that's used, milky smooth glassy glowy. And the faces usually associated with those words. What image pops into your mind? Historically, those haven't been Brown or Black skin tones. So after the initial surprise that I am not a cheese grater, after all, comes the, you look so young, do you tan? Is it true that Black people don't get wrinkles? Do you use special creams?
Well, of course, yes. They're made from the tears of mythical mountain dwelling rabbits. This is, of course, when the conversation wasn't about my hair because it alwayyysss about your hair and it was this constant re-educating of people that's been driving me bonkers. And so I started to make a little list.
Everything from dark skin tones don't get cancer to Black people don't tan, don't burn or my personal favorite , melanated skin doesn't irritate because obviously, we don't turn bright red or only Black people get ashy. Honey, I could see your un-moisturized elbows from here. So I began asking people what they thought, what they'd heard, have a listen.
Subira:
I think the main one that comes to mind for me is that, you know, Black people can't get skin cancer and everything related to that. So we don't need sunscreen, we don't get sunburn, we don't have any of those UV related issues. And I say that because it was something that I would, I believed, I think is like a kind of unspoken thing.
So when you go on holiday, like you might put on like some sunscreen to go to the beach, but you generally thought that you don't need it because you have. In you, and obviously now growing up, only in the last five years have I learned that that's not actually true. That obviously Black people can still get melanoma and, you know, still have horrible skin-related diseases due to sun exposure and things like that.
Nina:
You gotta wonder where some of these came from and how these tales by moonlight continue to perpetuate our realities. How many of us actually know enough about our skin type to care for it? Trying to cast out the demons of oiliness when it is literally just your skin being a tad more reflective. Is your dry skin a lack of oil, or is it a lack of water?
Greasing up your face when all you need is a little bit of moisture, honey, wax on. There's still not enough research out there. Not nearly enough research into melanated skin to allow us to make conclusive statements about most things, so we have to engage in a lot of trial and error. We try and we err and we try some more until the little thing on your face becomes a big thing on your face.
And so we slap on some glycolic acid on it and then some vitamin C because, hey, and so a lot of guesswork is going into trying to figure out what's going on with your skin. When someone with fair skin gets, I don't know, a bright red Rudolph situation, you might get itchiness or flaking of the skin, and even with that web med does not give you a definitive response, right?
I've gone to bed with cleansed, moisturized face and woken up with some random irritation from whence, I know not from whence. Some stuff we do know, though in general, melanin rich tones have higher sebum production, but we can still get dryness. melanin-rich skin tones age differently. If you take care of it. You can't be out there barbecuing yourself, smoking and consistently unmoisturized.
All the benefits of your melanin have to work alongside your habits, your diet. Yes, yes, diet. I said diet. You'd be surprised what broccoli and kale can do for your skin. And of course, stress levels and sleep. Imagine this. I'm standing in line at immigration in Nairobi. After what was literally 24 hours of flying; Asia to Africa is not as simple a route as it should be.
And I haven't slept this whole time. Right? And the smiling man in uniform says to me, you look tired, sister. And I thought If you didn't have my passport in your hand and I didn't need to get into this country, I would tell you about your life, uncle. But my skin, after a week of short sleep, everybody knows I look a little bit grungy.
With the myths, and misconceptions, it's not just what other people think. Its what we believe within the community of melanin rich skin tones; we've got some myths and some thoughts that we mold. We encourage these things, things about laser treatments, chemical peels, holy grail ingredients like glycolic acid and the magic wonder juice that is coconut oil.
Our Shea butter, our African black soap, and how and when we use these ingredients. But before the Shea butter warriors come for me ama leave that there. I thought today about how much more we need to know about the structure of our skin. The dermis, the epidermis, the melanocytes. Then I thought, Nina, shut up. Nobody else has to do all of that ish. They just trust that somebody else, ahem….the whole beauty industry already did that work, and they put in several medium sized bottles in slightly different packaging, all that they would ever need for their skin type and any skin condition that they might have.
And that's what I want. That's what I want for me, that's what I want for people like me whose choices are shea butter because it literally is duct tape for the body or whatever else is on the shelf that I know was probably not formulated with me in mind or even tested by somebody with my skin tone.
And it seems to me that this is still too far away. But you got to encourage yourself. And for today, my little bit of encouragement to myself is that I can now stomach kale in very small portions. Until next time, it's the Every Shade podcast.
I'm beautiful. I'm black!