Hasn’t Whitenicous given Dencia way more recognition than her music ever did? Mainstream media have now taken an interest in her. MediaTakeOut, Ebony magazine, The Chutch and now UK’s Daily Mail. If I were Dencia, I won’t feel any type of way about the headline…they are helping her sell her market for free. lol. Find the full text of Daily Mail’s article on Dencia after the cut…
A Nigerian and Cameroonian pop star who launched a skin cream called Whitenicious has defended her product after critics branded it an ‘abomination’ for promoting skin-bleaching.
In an interview with Ebony, Dencia claims that the skincare cream is intended to remove dark spots, and that it is out of her control if customers use it to whiten their entire skin.
Defending her own drastically altered appearance since she started using Whitenicious, the singer asserts: ‘I was never that dark in real life… And guess what? I don’t even care because [critics] are bringing me business.’
Skin bleaching is a growing trend in Dencia’s native West Africa, and critics are angered that it appears she is promoting it with her product.
Specifically, the pop star has been criticized for using her own changing skin tone as a marketing technique. Pictures of Dencia taken in 2011 show her with much darker pigmentation compared to the Whitenicious campaign where she appears several shades lighter.
Still, she refutes the idea that she is glorifying lighter skin, claiming it is for removing dark spots only and that she came up with the name because it’s symbolic for ‘fresh beginnings’ and ‘purification’.
Ultimately, Dencia admits than Whitenicious can indeed be used to bleach skin, but that most women wouldn’t use it this way because of its luxury price point.
Without skipping a beat, though, she proceeds to contradict herself by asserting that if a customer were to bleach her entire skin, it would be beyond her control.
When Dencia launched Whitenicious in January and saw it sell out within 24 hours, critics took to Twitter to voice their outrage that she would promote a phenomenon that has come to symbolize self-hatred among dark-skinned women.
One person posted a tweet directed at her, writing: ‘This #whitenicious cream of yours is an abomination and creating more insecurities among women all over the world.’
And another said: ‘When Martin Luther King, Jr. said, “I have a dream…” The dream was not to become white.’