Having a whiter skin is usually considered high class or hints at aristocracy. Bleaching of the skin goes back thousands of years, centuries even. Highborn ladies and gentlemen never allowed the sun to touch their skin, including their hands. If a woman got any color (from the sun) on her skin, she was usually considered low class. Highborn ladies had milk white skin and kept it that way by never going outdoors without a parasol (small umbrella), wide brimmed hats and gloves. Only peasants (the poor) had color (a tan).
These days, it’s far easier to keep your skin pale than having to wear layers of clothes, carry umbrellas around and where gloves in summer. It simply a case of wearing sunglasses, wide hats and sunscreen when you go outdoors. If, on the other hand, you already have a tan and you want to whitening your skin, the degree of difficulty will depend on a few factors.
Firstly, your age will play a role in how easy it would be to get rid of a tan. The company you are, the less damage they will be to your skin. Most of the time, it would be a simple case of simply avoiding direct sunlight by protecting your skin with sunblock and hats until your current tan fades completely. Really gentle exfoliating can speed up the process.
Secondly, the condition of your skin will also play a role. Again, your age comes into play. The more time you spend in the sun the darker your skin will be. As with get older, we begin to notice more and more irregular darker spots emerging on our skin (usually the face and hands). This is called melanin and the darker the skins splotches, the higher the melanin. Unfortunately, at this stage it can be a little bit trickier to remove a tan or lighten the skin. The older your skin is, the more fragile and delicate it becomes (not that your skin is any less delicate in your teens and 20s).
Choosing the correct or safest skin lightening route would be factor number three. If you prefer to go organic or natural, naturally it will take longer. By using home-made or DIY skin lightening products like cottage cheese, yoghurt, oats, aloe vera, lemon juice or the whole fruit, honey and even green tea (the list goes on), you’ll have less chance of causing any damage to your skin. The great thing about using organic home-made products, is that there are no harsh chemicals like mercury or sink in the product.
And it is precisely because of these harmful ingredients that make choosing over-the-counter or chemical whitening agent little bit more dangerous. Back in the old days, nobility would use powders and lotions laden with Mercury to bleach their skin. While using products high in heavy metals did produce an extremely white skin, the side effects were severe. The noble class typically died at an early age due to mercury poisoning from their skin bleaching products.
Fortunately, these days is fairly unlikely that you will come across a product (at least in the pharmacy or over-the-counter) that has dangerously high levels of mercury in it. The problem is, that some products can cause surface damage to the skin if used incorrectly. Cases of chemical burns that leave all, scabby lesions all over the face have been reported. Fortunately, these kinds of surface burns are superficial and not permanent. However, there have been cases where people have suffered irreparable damage to the face, leaving vicious scars instead of lilywhite skin. Reports of this nature are fortunately rare.
There are a few other methods used for skin whitening. For those who are born with a darker skin tone and wish to lie to that, there are actually products that work for the whole body and not just the face. One such product is papaya soap. It’s the most common and also the easiest to find. Essentially it works by sloughing off all the dead skin cells on the body to reveal new, whiter skin underneath. Of course, this works more for somebody who is trying to get rid of the tan, whether a fake or real. For best results, it’s advisable to use every day for about 7 to 8 weeks. Unfortunately, it won’t necessarily work for women of color.
Other whitening soaps include Kojic skin whitening soap, Gluthathione skin whitening soap and black liquorice skin whitening soap. Each one has its own pro and con and each will work differently for different people.
There are many more ways and products available (some easy to find and others), is just a question of looking in the right place.