That Damned Cake Soap 02/09/2011
 Vybz Kartel (photo courtesy of FB page) Adijah “Vybz Kartel” Palmer, one of Jamaica’s most popular dancehall artistes announced last year that he plans to launch a line of cake soap for the skin, apparently called Vybz Kartel Cake Soap. For those unfamiliar, cake soap is a solid, cheap, blue, almost brick looking detergent that is used by the majority of households in Jamaica, if not the Caribbean, to wash clothes by hand. So it is a little hilarious. Cake soap for the face? (A suitable North American parallel might be frothing your skin with All or Tide.) It seems like a gag product, the dancehall equivalent of fuzzy stuffed snakes springing out of the peanut brittle can. You almost feel as though Kartel is at home sniggering to himself as the collective blood pressure of Jamaicans rises.  Vybz Kartel (photo courtesy of FB page) It is also a little sad. Why? Because on the surface at least it seems as if the French got it right: “plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose” (the more things change, the more they stay the same). Not only has Kartel launched his own cake soap, he has also admitted (sort of) to bleaching. Bleaching is the act of deliberately lightening skin. This seems to have come as a shock to many across the world, and his comparing his skin lightening to a white person darkening their skin by tanning has many aghast (see youtube video below - approx. minute 3). This admission of intentionally striving for a fairer complexion brought again to the forefront the whole issue of identity, race, and class in Jamaica, issues that have the power to get us hot under the collar. It may be difficult to comprehend the depth of feeling around the issues being ventilated so here is my attempt at breaking it down. Vybz Kartel’s Sort of Admission One reason the situation seems infused with hilarity is because it’s been a little bit of a game trying to figure out what exactly Kartel has been doing to his skin. He has definitely become fairer. In an interview on Television of Jamaica’s Entertainment Report (ER) in September 2010 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mtFCaAWOrAM), Vybz Kartel responded to direct questions regarding his bleaching. His answer was that he was not using bleaching creams but he was however washing his face with cake soap and this had led to a fairer complexion. Thus, that and the fact that he was constantly in a cool, Air Conditioned environment had caused him to not be as dark as before. (Oh and by the way, nobody was buying that piece of tripe.) Fast forward to an interview in December 2010 on Ragashanti’s radio programme where he jokingly invoked his right not to answer the same question (minute 21 of http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9y-tPmqNP0Q&NR=1). In December 2010 Kartel did another interview on ER, again stating that his skin was being lightened by cake soap but admitting that he was doing this intentionally to get a new, fairer complexion, a new look (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EZ8xgQ33LyE). He has consistently stated that he has no problem if any man or woman wishes to bleach their skin as it is a free society and people have the choice to do as they wish. On a radio interview with Dionne Jackson-Miller on Beyond the Headlines he said that Jamaica has bigger things to worry about than persons bleaching. The whole “I wash my face with cake soap and now I’m five shades lighter” story (alibi?) by Kartel becomes even stranger (as if it weren’t strange enough) when you add to the mix that a manufacturer of cake soap has stated it is impossible for cake soap to cause the skin to change complexion in this way (http://www.jamaicaobserver.com/business/Cake-soap-company-lightens-Kartel-s-claim_8283170).  Sugar in a Plum but Red is Corruption The business of actively trying to lighten one’s skin is a part of historic Jamaica. According to Colin G. Clarke in Kingston Jamaica: Urban Development and Social Change 1692 – 2002, black and mixed race Jamaicans were trying to lighten their complexions through their reproductive and sexual practices from as far back as slavery. Says Clarke: In addition to white bias, there was a legal incentive to improving the colour. For although free mulattoes, quadroons, and mustees were denied full civil rights, all who were ‘three degrees removed in lineal descent from the negro ancestor were permitted to vote in elections and enjoy all the privileges and immunities of his majesty’s white sjubects int he island’. The Jews could achieve mobility through conversion but for the non-white population opportunities for improving the colour were vitally important: to the slaves who hoped to obtain their freedom or their children’s freedom through the intercession of a white father; and especially to the free people of colour who hoped to improve their social standing and provide their children or their children’s children with an almost European appearance. According to Clarke, it was the free bi-racial population in particular, which occupied the middle tier in the society between the plantocracy and the slaves, who were greatly invested in skin lightening through “mating” practices. The women almost exclusively had relations with white men. Yet separate and apart from producing fairer offspring there have historically been other, more direct ways of trying to lighten skin colour. Bleaching products have been available on the island from as least as far back as the 1920s. It is reported that Marcus Garvey would not allow advertising from hair straightening and skin bleaching companies in the various publications of the United Negro Improvement Association, an organisation established to raise the self esteem of black persons across the globe (http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/43/152.html). As a child growing up in the 1970s and 1980s I remember a popular advertisement on television for Nadinola Bleaching Cream featuring Marie Clare Delapenha, an upper class derived beauty queen. Home-made concoctions have included tooth paste, curry powder, powdered milk, household bleach, aloe vera and cornmeal (http://jamaica-gleaner.com/gleaner/20091115/news/news3.html). Cake soap seems to be relatively new on the scene as a skin lightening agent. What is often forgotten in the discussions is that Jamaicans are not homogenous in their attitude towards “brown” skin. Alongside the childhood ring game which tells us the brown girl “looks like a sugar in a plum”, “red is corruption” is another childhood taunt. The latter was a popular expression to refer to the idea that the co-mingling of white and black blood produced something disastrous. According to Jamaican writer and sociologist Erna Brodber who was born in Woodside, St. Mary in 1946, being brown in her community was not a good thing, persons were happy to be black. Perhaps this came as a result of the disdain with which the brown middle class throughout Jamaica’s period of slavery and colonialism is said by Colin Clarke to have viewed the black masses. There are scant statistics on how widespread is the use of skin bleaching agents. The discussion however tends to focus on their use among lower income Kingston residents and several video reports have focused on the sale of bleaching agents in downtown Kingston, a place mostly frequented by lower income Jamaicans. So the conversation on bleaching becomes loaded with an underlying class issue. The Music The discussion started afresh in Jamaican with the now famous line in a Kartel song “cool like me wash mi face wid di cake soap”. Vybz Kartel is not the first Jamaican artiste to sing about bleaching or skin lightening. The trend has been to condemn the act of bleaching as evidenced by ‘Dem a Bleach’ sung by Nardo Ranks in the 80s. Moving to the 1990s another song which mentions bleaching and reduces it to a freaky act done by men behaving like women is “Bad Man Nuh Dress Like Girl”. Queen Ifrica’s “Mi Nah Rub” in the 2000s was another memorable one which again dealt with bleaching directly and condemned it wholeheartedly. Lisa Hyper (formerly Lisa Hype) was perhaps the first artiste to openly sing about bleaching in a laudatory fashion with her two songs “Proud a My Bleaching” and “Bleaching Fit Mi” in 2008. Interestingly enough, Kartel himself sang a song kind of against bleaching “Weh di Bleaching Fah?”. So with the increased focus on Kartel and his own bleaching, there are a new crop of songs. “Straight Jeans and Fitted” started it off it seems with the hook “cool like mi wash mi face wid di cake soap”. “Caan Get Brown” was a rejoinder by Kiprich seeking to dispel the idea that a black person’s complexion could be lightened with cake soap. Kartel came out with “Cake Soap” which was essentially a chest thumping song (all the men are jealous, all the girls want him). Finally “Black and Proud/Me Nah Bleach” was done by Vegas and is an update of ‘Dem a Bleach’ by Nardo Ranks in the 1980s. The Discussion The emotions surrounding Vybz Kartel’s open admission must be seen in the context of Jamaica’s discussions regarding class, race and skin shade. It is a fact that slavery and colonialism were oppressive machineries that actively sought to deny Africans their humanity. The life’s work of Marcus Garvey, one of Jamaica’s national heroes, dealt with the issues surrounding feelings of inferiority present in black people throughout the globe as a result of slavery and colonialism. Thus Vybz Kartel’s parallel between tanning and bleaching is not easily swallowed. In fact, it is seen by many as proof of the continued notion of the superiority of fairer skin and the inferiority of a dark complexion. This creates a sense of disappointment perhaps, maybe anger, directed towards a figure who is popular and very influential among Jamaican youth. Others like commentator Annie Paul (http://anniepaulose.wordpress.com/2011/01/12/the-bleaching-of-the-nation/) have gone further in the discussion insisting that bleaching is just one of the symptoms of self hatred among black Jamaicans. Hatred of the Jamaican language (patois) and the widespread straightening of hair by women is seen as further evidence of lack of racial pride. So What? What is kind of interesting is Kartel’s determination to lay his skin lightening at the feet of cake soap use which all experts, from dermatologists to cake soap producers to Bounty Killer (hah!) claim to be impossible. Why not just admit openly as Lisa Hyper has done that he is using a bleaching cream or pill or injection or whatever? Why the need for secrecy when he has already admitted to working to in effect bleach? Why does it have to be bleaching by cake soap and nothing else? Is this a well-thought out plan aimed at selling cake soap to the gullible? Is there a tinge of shame? Or is it simply Kartel stirring up controversy, getting a great deal of publicity and having a big laugh to boot? Does it matter really? It would be impossible to say, never having met him, that Kartel suffers from self hatred. It is however very disturbing in the saddest way that centuries later many Jamaicans seem to have drunk the kool-aid resulting in this malaise of the spirit evidenced by this fairer skin. Because you really have to ask, why is the dark skin not good enough? While one can accept that yes, everyone is free to do as they wish with their life, if bleaching is seen as something admirable and acceptable by a growing percentage of Jamaican society, it must be acknowledged that something is off. It is not enough for one group to condemn another group for low self esteem as though high esteem were something that everyone has. It is not. In fact, one of the reasons I believe that persons need to bleach is because there is such division in Jamaica. So, one side of society is constantly looking for something to criticise about the other side. In this bleaching discussion, it’s the bleachers (maybe poor, black, maybe not so educated) against the non-bleachers (a heterogeneous group but loudly represented by the intelligentsia) again underscoring division. Bleaching will stop when there are enough opportunities to succeed for the bottom rung of society. An education which is geared towards a positive reflection of the young student who reads about the success of others who look like her may help over time but perhaps the most important thing is for the society to lose it’s triangular shape and become flatter. And importantly too, it can’t simply be that those at the bottom believe that they are worthy, those at the top and those at the middle need to believe that of them too. We’ve got a long, long way to go. Comments02/09/2011 14:17
This article is really well written. I've been following this Kartel bleaching saga for a while and in a way it makes me laugh but at the same time it's sad. Everyone should just be happy with what God gave them. 02/12/2011 03:03
There was a song that I did not include done by Captain Barkey in around 2000 called "Bleach On". Watch video here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I9Us4YvcLC0 02/12/2011 03:07
Thanks everyone for the feedback. Thanks Annie for providing greater clarity on your article which I enjoyed reading. 02/12/2011 03:14
Nice, comprehensive article... vybz kartel can do what he likes. whats this bullshit as the black race? there is no such thing as a black race. there is such thing as an african race, and so many many negroes or so called blacks love to say they are black and deny that they are african! black was a dereogatry word given by white people to to afrians to symbolize everything back, like black heart, black eye,bad credit, look in the ENGLISH dictonary for yourself at all the conotations to black lol!! 03/28/2011 20:05
The article is worth reading, I like it very much. I will keep your new articles. Leave a Reply | Quote"We refuse to be what you wanted us to be, we are what we are, that's the way it's going to be." - Robert Nesta Marley, 1945 - 1981 ArchivesOctober 2011 CategoriesAll |
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