Dont you think Whitenicous has given Dencia far more recognition than her music ever did?
Mainstream media have now taken a pastime in her. MediaTakeOut, Ebony
magazine, The Chutch and now UK's Daily Mail. If I were Dencia, I won't
feel almost any way in regards to the headline...they are helping her
sell her market for free. hehe. Find the entire text of Daily Mail's
article on Dencia after the break...
A Nigerian and Cameroonian pop star
who launched a skin cream called Whitenicious has defended her product
after critics branded it an 'abomination' for promoting skin-bleaching.
In an interview with Ebony,
Dencia claims that the skincare cream is intended to remove dark spots,
and that it is out of her control if customers use it to whiten their
entire skin.
Defending her
own drastically altered appearance since she started using Whitenicious,
the singer asserts: 'I was never that dark in real life... And guess
what? I don't even care because [critics] are bringing me business.'
According to the product website,
Whitenicious - which bears the slogan, 'Say goodbye to pigmentation and
spots forever' - effectively lightens skin in just seven days.
Skin
bleaching is a growing trend in Dencia's native West Africa, and
critics are angered that it appears she is promoting it with her
product.
Specifically, the
pop star has been criticized for using her own changing skin tone as a
marketing technique. Pictures of Dencia taken in 2011 show her with much
darker pigmentation compared to the Whitenicious campaign where she
appears several shades lighter.
'When you take that picture and you
put a picture of Dencia darker, this is what you're telling people - the
product really works. And guess what? People really want to buy it.
It's what it is. I don't really care,' the singer admitted.
Still, she refutes the idea that she
is glorifying lighter skin, claiming it is for removing dark spots only
and that she came up with the name because it's symbolic for 'fresh
beginnings' and 'purification'.
She
then elaborates by saying: 'Look at all the Africans that are
successful in the world. They are as Black as Alek Wek. And if I was as
Black as Alek Wek, I would never ever use anything on my skin.'
Ultimately,
Dencia admits than Whitenicious can indeed be used to bleach skin, but
that most women wouldn't use it this way because of its luxury price
point.
'I don't see anybody spending all that
money to bleach their entire skin,' she says of her product, which
costs $60 for a small pot and $160 for a large one. 'I don’t see that
happening.'
Without skipping
a beat, though, she proceeds to contradict herself by asserting that if
a customer were to bleach her entire skin, it would be beyond her
control.
Finally, when Dencia is warned that
skin-lightening cream has been proven to cause cancer, she counters:
'But guess what? The air you breathe outside causes you cancer.
Everything in the world causes cancer.'
When
Dencia launched Whitenicious in January and saw it sell out within 24
hours, critics took to Twitter to voice their outrage that she would
promote a phenomenon that has come to symbolize self-hatred among
dark-skinned women.
One
person posted a tweet directed at her, writing: 'This #whitenicious
cream of yours is an abomination and creating more insecurities among
women all over the world.'
And another said: 'When Martin Luther King, Jr. said, "I have a dream…" The dream was not to become white.'
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