Of skin that needs care

Not mine for thee

I am reminded of a phlebotomist who would never succeed in extracting a droplet of blood from out of my veins, no matter how hard he tried. That he is in that position must mean he is fully qualified to attend to such a delicate matter.

Yet, at closer to 7 than 6 feet tall and with a frame that would well be found with lumberjacks than in a hospital, his hands large as fans to compare with elephant ears that no matter how soft they are their gigantic expanse presents an apparent Lilliputian to a Gulliver in scrubs, almost too terrifying to countenance.

My first sight of him as he approached with a bowl of vials and phlebotomy paraphernalia my veins seized up and decided, no dainty word of comfort said from thee shall my veins yield to thy touch. By the time I was pricked and poked that I was a humanoid representation of the Swiss cheese called Emmental, I was sent to the hospital’s blood room where dexterity and capacity meant they could make stones exsanguinate and I to them was not a stone.

Oiling of the epidermis

The other day, I thought about my chapped lips that I hate putting lip balm on as it feels so irritating, I am ready to wipe it off in minutes. Surprisingly, I endured a whole night of the application of the lip balm and not since I used Wet Lips way back in Nigeria, a liquid balm with a roll-on applicator that gives a glistening and glossy look that might appear unusual on males but worked a treat.

That I have preferred to peel off dried skin from my lips despite the bruising and pain than using a balm is strange but convenient. Then moisturisation is a necessity I too often decline to my detriment, from hands to skin shedding on the soles of my feet and certain hard hands that might entertain a visit from a version of lib balm for the manicurist’s table.

I guess whilst parts of my face can seem to be oily, my skin needs a bit more care than I readily submit myself to essential grooming. I get the best care for my skin when Brian not only insists but is at hand, those hands to give my feet more than the kneading and care required.

Paris: Boulevard de l'Unpretty - Revisited.

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Talking hair is not cheap

Hair is politics, or should I say political. It is also commercial, it is big business. Yet, it is quite personal, the choice of expression with or without hair is interesting and sometimes just left to the observation.

Then, you come to the real issue, the one of hair for black women. I was walking down the road on Boulevard de Strasbourg, just after the Saint Laurent Catholic Church on the left, before the street changes to Boulevard de Sebastopol and I observed something I had not seen before.

There were men stood in front of shops accosting women and doing everything to persuade them to come into the shops, black women that is, and these shops had dangling from every window and hook as you peered in from the shop windows and the doors, hair of every dark shade, ready to be used as augmentation of natural hair.

How long has this been going on?

Now, I have seen architectural works of the hair that I cannot fathom how much skill and time it has taken to put those creations on the heads of the wearers and they do not come cheap by any stretch of the imagination.

I have written of this section of Paris before, both sides of the street teeming like an African ghetto that even I feel too much of an outsider to be able to relate. Literally, every shop sells hair and cosmetics, and as they are all selling the same things, you do wonder about what makes each shop unique as competition is brisk, if not cutthroat, you probably need men to literally muscle in the customer off the street.

Blog: Paris: Boulevard de l'Unpretty

Travelled the world and the seven hairs

The hair, however, is a different story, having travelled off the shorn heads of poor people from the hinterland of Brazil and India, the hair has become the travelled dream of people who probably would never see miles beyond their locality for a lifetime.

The profits from these lengths of follicular fancy would hardly get to them. That is absorbed somewhere in the value chain by people who have probably become billionaires in the purveyance of this fleeting enhancement to beauty.

I would not know if there is a fair-trade hair construct that ensures a bit more of the profits of this arbitrage goes back to the source communities of the hair. That is another element of the opacity of capitalism.

Where’s the shampoo?

I guess for me, the only hair product I use is a razor and shaving gel if that counts as hair products. I shave my head just while I shave my beard, or whatever those itchy bristles are. It was funny and cheeky when my friend as he was using the shower ventured then declined. He then said he could not ask me for something I basically could not have. Shampoo!

That is another story. The trade in hair is about to get nasty and it is in the pulling of customers rather than of their hair.

Like TLC does say, “You can buy your hair if it won’t grow.”

Paris: Boulevard de l'Unpretty

An observation

Walking up Boulevard de Strasbourg towards Gare de l’Est Station, I could not help but notice amongst the bijou restaurants and cafes along with the decrepit but expensive hotels that would hardly elicit a 2-star rating on any self-respecting booking site, the ethnic homogeneity of people and shops.

Whilst I would not venture the suggestion of African town as a corollary to Chinatown, most of the shops had something to do with hair, cosmetics and some fashion.

The barbers and there were a few, and much as I should resist the temptation to get into the Afro hair wars, an observation of this sort must not be left unattended to.

Changing the African

Now, the shops had all manner of paints and colours, makeup to make scary clowns of otherwise beautiful and comely people. The matter of hair extensions is another thing, not one lady of African ancestry appears to sport natural hair.

No braids, no plaits, rather, we all happen to have hair like Caucasians will have their hair, relaxed, long and falling over the shoulders, most black and at times melanin-deficient brown. It is not like I should have much to say about hair, from the moment I noticed male-pattern baldness, I have shaved my head rather than exercise myself over the loss of hair.

The unpretty angst

This is inexpensive for me, considering I shave it just when I have my regular shaves and the occasional scrapes that take fillets of skin off my scalp that the pain gives that unusual opportunity to shed a tear or two.

Beyond hair, the skin is toned and despite that tendency to scarring some have resorted to cosmetic surgery with varying results, and that is not to say of those who have paid the ultimate price enhancing their boobs, buttocks or looks. When are we going to feel secure and comfortable in our own skins?

It goes without saying that we have bought into a mindset that creates a fashion industry exploiting the predominant view that naturally, we are somewhat unpretty. Yet, we must all choose the look that makes us most confident about ourselves, even if it is not natural, that is one of the amazing things about the resourcefulness of our humanity. However, the greatest beauty will always be on the inside.

TLC – Take it away!

Blog: Paris: Boulevard de l'Unpretty - Revisited.

Opinion: Thankfully comfortable in our own skins

She changed herself

I came across a video on Facebook where a married and successful Cameroonian model appeared on television to talk about her experience and pride with skin lightening.

The Atlantic BlackStar published the video with the title - This African Model’s Attitude Towards Skin Bleaching Only Confirms the Impact of Colorism on Global Scale.

There is probably a global discussion on colour politically referred to as ‘Colorism’, I am not particularly interested in taking sides. However, reading through the Facebook comments that were posted, I could see the excoriation and the condemnation expressed by many and could very well understand their views on the matter.

Here was a heretofore stunningly beautiful woman who for whatever reasons that could not be fully expressed in that interview or any other forum, who had transmogrified into something that might be beautiful to her but less so to others.

My comment

I posted a comment to that discussion where I took a broader view of the issue along the lines below:

“At which point I wonder what my skin will look like blue and my hair green.

Much as I can agree with the views expressed we should be careful not to see this matter superficially.

When I was recuperating from chemotherapy I channel-hopped to the E! Channel and saw Dr. 90210 where beautiful people had gotten into their minds they were not so beautiful that they needed cosmetic or radical change.

We link appearance with confidence down to some adverts suggesting tampons, I'm sorry, make all the difference.

The question then is whether mind, society or some other pressure led to the 'desecration' of the original beauty.

Let us be thankful we are comfortable in our own skins.”

Is this harmful?

Watching the interview, I could not help but notice the look of incredulity on the face of the other lady interviewing, as if she wondered of the apparent caricature, and I use that word advisedly, was for real.

And whilst the lady might have been convinced of the change she had wrought upon herself, I was more scared of the message and the example she might represent to others less successfully or privileged that they resort to changes to their bodies that can bring lasting harm.

At a point in that interview she referenced the use of the bleaching agent hydroquinone which even in topic applications of 2% concentration is banned in the EU, at 4%, it should be prescribed and to hear of her 16% concentrations, one can only imagine the damage done to her once beautifully natural skin.

Looks quite harmful

The FDA already considers hydroquinone a potential carcinogen and according the Wikipedia reference or hydroquinone, this line is best lifted verbatim. “This conclusion was reached based on the extent of absorption in humans and the incidence of neoplasms in rats in several studies where adult rats were found to have increased rates of tumours, including thyroid follicular cell hyperplasias, anisokaryosis, mononuclear cell leukaemia, hepatocellular adenomas and renal tubule cell adenomas. The Campaign for Safe Cosmetics has also highlighted concerns.” [Wikipedia] [Campaign For Safe Cosmetics - Hydroquinone]

It goes without saying much as I am not an active supporter of vivisection that the results from animal testing might well indicate hydroquinone as an agent for skin bleaching is not healthy and almost conclusively very harmful, all in the quest for a form of superficial beauty or the destruction of original beauty.

Yet, for whatever reasons this lady has taken radical measures to dispense of the tone of her original skin colouration, disfigurement is too strong a word, we that have either lacked the opportunity to do so or have decided we have no need to do so should be thankful that for now, we are comfortable in our own skins.

Thought Picnic: The tracks of a spider on my skin

Lumbered out of slumber

I have not accepted the fact that I probably suffer from insomnia even though some close friends have observed my erratic sleeping patterns.

My pill time is usually in the 2-hour window between 23:00 hours and 01:00 hours, suggesting I am awake until about 02:00 hours in the morning.

Once I am in bed, I polish off a few tweets, sometimes I get into a scrap many will consider rank floccinaucinihilipilification, but that is part of making light of a long day.

Sounds for bounds

Some music, a teaching, or audio lectures become the background sound of my descent into slumber that rarely stretches beyond 3 hours, if I do not wake up at least once in that period.

However, I have learnt to sleep with no background sounds and eliminated the fear of my mind wandering too far for me to control; the nightmares that feast on the agitated seeds of my imagination.

Lights, I still need, and that story is longer than I have time to tell or write about. I have somewhat found a way to sleep short, but rest well, even if I could do with a lot more sleep.

After my second short session of sleep that brought the dawning of the day, I said a little prayer and rolled over to interact with my social media community.

Derma arachnida

I felt a tingling itch asking for a scratch on my arm. And there, between the rational that saw a spider and the split second of the reflex of a flailed arm of its disappearance onto the camouflaged protection of the carpet; I realised I did not have enough information to ask for an antidote if I had been stung by the spider.

I guess that sometimes defines how we react to circumstances. The information we have acquired in the split second that requires the patience of another few seconds to make rational decisions based on getting better informed is lost to reflex and reaction that you are left none the wiser about the experience.

Surely, my spider moment is no exercise in floccinaucinihilipilification, is it?

Sun Getting in Europe

Sun’s out

We come out and we laid down in the sun for burning. It is the reptilian nature of Northern Europeans to sun bathe, every appearance of the glowing sun with its warmth and heat is a welcome sign to strip off and soak it in.

Now, those of us of darker skin are usually not persuade of the sun worshipping ritual all by reason of the fact that we have come from sunnier climes where we probably always sought the shade and when we did not, we had our houses and offices fitted with air-conditioners that brought tundra to the tropics.

Sun health

I did remember one office I visited in Lagos that required we all wore jumpers for the artificially manufactured cold – no one considered the cost of and the energy it took to freeze the building.

The fact is we also need the sun because essential Vitamin D is produced by our exposure to the sun which we do not get enough of in Europe that we have to take supplements in the winter months.

Humidity is sometimes a curse, it is usually so high as to be suffocating, we need the sun, we need hydration and we need cooling down. One other problem that we have encountered is after about 8 years of living in Europe we become so susceptible to hay fever – the feeling could be so nasty, those of us spare the ravages of that ailment can only be thankful.

Sun getting

By and large, we should take in the sun with moderation and there isn’t much we can do with sun screen lotions since the pigmentation that is literally invisible on Caucasian skin shows up as if we have been face painting.

The sun is out, we should make the best of summer, my shorts, my bicycle and off to the man-made beach I used to scoff at.