The Fact of Blackness? The Bleached Body in Contemporary Jamaica

Abstract

This essay examines public discussions around skin bleaching in Jamaica and demonstrates that a discourse of pathology is a dominant frame of meaning used to explain this practice. I argue that the practice of bleaching destabilizes popular conceptions of blackness that rely on an understanding of the body as immutable and naturally marked by race. Depicting skin bleaching as pathological attempts to recenter hegemonic conceptions of blackness and to discipline bodies so that they adhere to them.

Black Women's Bodies and The Nation

“…Boys as young as twelve are bleaching, as well as men as part of grooming (TVJ, 2013).The government campaigns are also part of the gaze of brownness which dissects the darker-skinned Black body and 'bleached brownings'. This gaze reproduces shade governmentality through discourses of pathology and risk (medical), Black anti-racist aesthetics and colour privilege as 'being born' not 'made' (Brown-Claude, 2007).…”

“…Jamaican class structure. This is in a society where more than 97 per cent of the population is Black -African descent -and the chronically, transgenerationally poor, un-/under-employed and urban/rural dispossessed continue to be darker-skinned (Brown-Claude, 2007).…”

“…They are also overrepresented in better neighbourhoods and professional jobs, while darker-skinned Blacks are socially, spatially and economically segregated (Brown-Claude, 2007). The past few decades have seen a continuing and deepening downward spiral in the Jamaican economy.…”

“…The past few decades have seen a continuing and deepening downward spiral in the Jamaican economy. There have been further reductions in formal sector jobs because of structural adjustment policies which have devastated Jamaica's poor in terms of access to education, jobs, housing and health (Brown-Claude, 2007). However, the brown middle and upper class continue to be untouched.…”

“…'The rise of skin bleaching in Jamaica correlates with the contraction of the economy, especially in the 1990s when the society was still reeling from the effects of structural adjustment' (Brown-Claude, 2007: 49). As social mobility diminishes, as neo-liberal subjects, bleachers engage in body transformations in order to acquire racial, class and aesthetic privilege denied to the darker-skinned (Brown-Claude, 2007;Hope, 2009). As for the beautician mentioned above, the very fact of being able to buy the products means that you have excess cash to spend on enhancing your look which already produces social capital.…”