Acting White: Sammy Sosa’s Skin Lightening and Attraction

Skin whitening has yet to gain popularity in America, save for the late Michael Jackson and now Sammy Sosa. The former Chicago-slugger, better known for homers and steroids, was pictured a while back in Las Vegas at the Latin America Grammies sporting ‘white face’. Sammy’s move, and full confession, is a good opening to a quick drive-thru on color-ism.

We know that evolutionary skin pigmentation levels, in humans, are a factor of sun intensity, as dictated by latitude. However, within female populations of a given region, relative lightness is also a function of estrogen levels and indicates, to innate male sensitivities, child-bearing potential. It turns out that young females just past puberty are at their lifetime lightest in color, and will become darker with the first, and each successive, child they produce.

So it is not only Euro-ness that some darker people dangerously chase with chemicals and pharmaceuticals, mostly outside of the US in Africa and S. America. It is also youthfulness, as presented by estrogen levels. Of course, I have no idea what crazy Sammy, the dude, is thinking. Somebody needs to tell him that testosterone, the stuff he was illegally taking to slam home runs and get babes, expresses itself in darker skin tones. This is the reason behind the universal womanly swoon of ‘tall, dark, and handsome’. Maybe Sammy is just expressing his youthful feminine side, or (better yet) trying to undo many years of ‘skin-darkening’ steroid abuse. Who knows?

In any event, I put these products, along with colored-eye implants, in that very dangerous, desperate, and MJ-crazy category of I-hate-myself nip/tuck stunts. I am happy that aggressive skin-lightening has never really caught on in the US - despite Beyonce’s’ Revlon commercials.

James C. Collier

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