Is white really pure?

The Cameroonian singer Dencia is still on the mission to have every black girl and woman thinking their skin colour isn’t “pure” enough unless it’s lightened and of course suggests, using her own product “Whitenicious”, to help with that process. For you ladies not in the know, Whitenicious was created by Dencia to get rid of hyperpigmentation and dark spots in only seven days! Pictures of her have come out showing that her skin has changed drastically from being a beautiful dark skinned woman to a lighter version of herself, which implied her product was a skin-bleaching product, even though she says it is not. When the lovely actress Lupita Nyong’o made comments in one of her speeches about how when she was younger she prayed every night that she would wake up the next morning with a lighter skin tone, she also mentioned how products like “Whitenicious” are harmful to young black girls around the world the world, Dencia went to Twitter to make snide remarks to Lupita and stated that young women call her crying and thanking her for making their life better. It is really unfortunate that as Africans we have very few women making a name for themselves in the spotlight so sometimes you have even the ignorant ones influencing our young sisters and daughters about how they should feel about themselves. As I have mentioned in the past, I have not really had such a bad experience with feeling like I had to be a lighter tone; did I have issues with hair, yes. I wanted the nice blow in the wind hair, but that is not possible unless you apply certain amount of chemicals to your hair and my mother was just not having that done to me. As African women, we really do need to learn about portraying ourselves in a better manner. As Rwandans, we could do more mentoring and sharing our stories with young women so that they know they can also make it in whatever they wish to succeed in. Personally, I have tried my best to be a great example to my sister. She has grown to be even way more ambitious and successful than I would have ever thought and it warms my heart a bit when she admits it’s because of me. She does not have the insecurities of her peers, but she always knows I would slap the taste out of her mouth figuratively if I saw her say anything like “#TeamDarkskin” or anything of that sort on her social media. She knows she is worth more than the colour of her skin and I wish someone like Dencia, who has a platform, would teach her followers that. She has the right to bleach her skin but I wish she would think of the girls back in her own home country and the message she is spreading. So ladies, what is your message to young women?