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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
World
Kat Lay

Colonial ideas of beauty: how skin-lightening products are linked to cancer in black African women

Woman applying cream to her face.
Skin lightening, seen by some as producing a more desirable tone, removes melanin, decreasing natural protection from the sun. Photograph: Simon Maina/AFP/Getty Images

Two months after first going to hospital, a 65-year-old woman was dead – and her doctors are blaming the cosmetic creams she used on her face and body for decades.

The anonymous patient, from Togo, is one of a string of recent cases reported in medical journals of cancers in black African women linked to skin-lightening creams and lotions, prompting dermatologists to call for better regulation.

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