Skin peeling video angers viewers ... woman shows new method to change skin colour

... woman shows new method to change skin colour

A Jamaican woman, who was trying to make her skin lighter by peeling off the top layer of her skin, has disgusted some Facebook users who were appalled at the extent she was going to change her skin colour.

A 40-second video showed a person removing a layer of skin from the woman's leg.

"Tek off da sox deh off mi foot gyal," the woman said as another woman removed the layer of skin. "Anyway the product is available if you need it. This is how I do my bleaching."

Some comments were quite caustic.

"This is madness. Black people can't see the danger in skin bleaching?" one user asked.

Another user asked: "Are these people serious? Could someone really hate their skin colour that much?"

extreme thinning

Others simply said that they find the video too disgusting to watch.

The conventional method used by bleachers is to apply chemicals to the skin to lighten its tone by reducing the amount of melanin.

Side effects include extreme thinning of the skin, and developing stretch marks, according to dermatologist, Carrol Burrell.

The method being used in the video however may seem similar to chemical peeling.

However, Burrell said that chemical peeling doesn't cause the skin to shed huge layers.

move pigmentation

"Gentle peeling; that's how it works. It doesn't move huge layers of the skin because if you do that you are gonna move pigmentation, which means that you would have damaged the skin," Burrell said.

Psychologist Dr Leahcim Semaj, believes that systematic racism is the problem.

"We can take it all the way back to slavery. The half children of the planter, they got a lot of access, a lot of resources. So many people believe that if they were lighter, my chances in life would be better and I would feel better about myself," Semaj said.

Burrell warned that chemical peeling should only be done by a trained professional.

"Chemical skin peeling, if it is done incorrectly, they could peel too deep and cause hyper pigmentation which means the skin will get extremely dark. So even though they are trying to get lighter, they will get darker," Burrell warned.