Coloring with Cake Soap
The eye of the Vybz Kartel storm seems to have passed, but late as it is, I have to weigh in. For anyone who has not been following the feverish debates, Vybz is a popular Jamaican dancehall artist who is no stranger to controversy and known for some of his more salacious songs like “Rampin’ Shop,” performed with Spice. However, he has recently been in the news because of the ways in which he’s chosen to modify his body over the last few years through a combo of tattooing and skin bleaching, the latter of which he claims he accomplished through the use of cake soap (a soap usually used in Jamaica as laundry detergent). These images posted on the website Mad News show the dramatic changes in Vybz’s complexion and pretty much tell the tale of what brought the whole brouhaha to a head.
Vybz Kartel
Vybz’s decision to bleach has been the main source of recent contention, and a good deal of the commentary on the street and in the media has been quite disparaging about his efforts to lighten up, inferring that his appetite for bleaching reflects an underlying desire to erase his blackness. This controversy has played out in the Jamaican newspapers over the past few months, and after responding to an article written by Carolyn Cooper, Vybz received an invitation from Cooper to offer a lecture at the Mona campus of the University of the West Indies. He accepted, and the much anticipated lecture took place earlier this month.
Some commentators, like my friend Annie Paul, have offered what I find a very balanced and thoughtful approach to Vybz. On her blog Active Voice Annie comments on Vybz’s lecture:
We think nothing of purging the kink out of our hair or the Jamaican accent from our speech–both are socially accepted; but if Black women are free to chemically terrorize their hair into limp straightness why can’t Vybz Kartel lighten his skin if he chooses to?? And why are we only mounting a hue and cry about skin bleaching downtown while deliberately averting our gaze from the many skin lightening creams such as Ambi and Nadinola used in uptown homes? The selective moral outrage is telling–this seems to be yet another case of moralizing the so-called lower classes.
I agree, and to further expand on Annie’s thoughts, I wonder if some of the uptown moral outrage may be rooted in anxieties about the ways in which poor people create unconventional avenues to gain class mobility and “skip the line” so to speak to what they envision as an improved socio-economic status, with which lighter skin is most certainly associated.
Here’s what I mean: For most of us, a combination of academic effort as well as professional excellence have earned us something in the vicinity of a middle-class profile. We also gain this profile through the inheritance of both skin color and wealth. Achieving or maintaining this profile has taken time and labor, or in the case of inheritance, was our birthright—something to which we had a right. Bleaching, in essence, aims to garner its followers some of the benefits of that middle-class profile without the necessary academic or professional efforts or the privilege of inheritance through a kind of deception, the same deception to which Annie refers when she mentions attempts to erase accents or straighten hair.
This anxiety about efforts to inhabit an alternate race/class space is nothing new, and similar forms of cultural censorship have been documented throughout the Caribbean. I’ll take the liberty to quote from my own work, The Embodiment of Disobedience: Fat Black Women’s Unruly Political Bodies, in which I contemplate middle-class disdain for ghetto-fabulousness: The fancy hairstyles, the colorful clothing, and, of course, bling.
In E.A. Hastings’ travel narrative, A Glimpse of the Tropics, published in Britain in 1900, he describes his visit to the town of Mandeville in Jamaica and his encounter with black, Jamaican women dressed for church on Sunday morning. Interestingly, his account from over one hundred years ago parallels today’s resistance to ghetto-fabulousness:
Big hulking negresses were attired in gorgeous silks and satins, and truly wonderful hats with broad brims and feathers, and ribbons of the most elaborate and stylish description. The wooly heads under all this fashionable headgear were pathetically ludicrous. Some had contrived, after years of labour, to gather up a little bunch [of hair] at the back, which gave them an honourable position in negro society. (242)
Hastings’ indignation at this superimposing of white dress codes and hair fashion on black bodies and his perception of this act of racial cross-dressing as “ludicrous” reveals his recognition as well as his fear that racial boundaries are unstable.
Hastings is upset and nervously laughing “anh ha, anh ha” because he is quite undone by the thought that people so clearly anchored to a particular status by their blackness would even attempt to transgress those borders and approximate whiteness through fashion.
I’d like to suggest that bleaching among poor (and wealthy) Jamaicans also aims to render race and class boundaries unstable and is informed by the desire to infiltrate more speedy and easily accessible routes to the presumed benefits of lighter skin such as greater sexual mobility, improved job opportunities, and higher class status. Even if Vybz claims bleaching has become primarily a stylistic choice, as a cultural critic I can’t help but argue that those choices find their root in something less visible, less immediately knowable. And while self-hatred may not be the source of Vybz’s penchant for bleaching, bleachers most certainly anticipate the benefits of brown privilege from this costly, unhealthy, and in some instances quite painful endeavor.
While I find the old Vybz far more attractive, undoubtedly he’s not trying to please me or anyone else and said so as much during his visit to UWI. Annie quotes Vybz from his lecture:
…I further maintain that bleaching today doesn’t mean the same as bleaching twenty-five years ago…we are a much prouder race who know that we can do what we want as far as style is concerned, we dictate styles and regard them as just that–styles. So as controversial as bleaching might be right now, I bask in my controversy with cake soap as my suntan.
I wonder, would we feel this kind of outrage if Vybz were white and chose to spend his weekends in a tanning salon? Or can we leave Vybz to color in his coloring book any way he pleases?
Watch Vybz’s video “Coloring Book”: Kvbz Kartel Singing \”Coloring Book\”
Annie Paul’s article on her blog Active Voice:
Carolyn Cooper’s Gleaner article in which she shares Vybz’s message to her:
http://jamaica-gleaner.com/gleaner/20110306/cleisure/cleisure3.html,
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7 comments
The ludicrosity is in claiming that he, or any other bleacher is/are proud to be black etc, yet are openly and actively changing their skin color. Has any bleached person actually enjoyed the professional mobility they believe would be made possible by lighter skin? Do they have the accompanyying educational qualifications? From what Ive readheard, the progress comes really in inter-personal relations, the newly ‘brown’ boy /girl acquires more admirers.
I honestly think that Vybz does not need skin bleaching to obtain admirers. On the contrary he is liable to lose admirers with this act (Elephant Man’s “Bad Man Don’t Dress Like Girl” comes to mind). Personally I think he is crazy for doing for it but if he said he did it for style so be it.
The only thing I am worried about is the effect on the youth and the dangers of following this “style”.
Philippa, thanks for the feedback. I don’t believe the anticipated benefits of bleaching live up the reality. But I imagine there is some benefit that bleachers experience in order for them to continue engaging in this activity. I think that you are right about the greatest impact being in interpersonal relationships. We can’t deny that generally speaking Jamaica remains browning-centric!
Interesting that you quote Elephant Man. The feminizing of bleaching and other bodily manipulations (like hair coloring and eyebrow plucking) has not seemed to really impact the increase of these activities among patrons of the dancehall and men performing within that space. Seems what might be true is that bad man can dress anyhow he likes (a la Dudus) and that badmanship is in no way diminished!
I concur with Andrea’s analysis of the implications of bleaching in the Jamaican society. Dominant social ideals dictate that privilege in whatever capacity should only be afforded to those born to it, either through skin colour or wealth. Conveniently, these dominant social ideals are manufactured by the elite minority, which is influenced by the colonial fractions the Caribbean has been, again, “privileged” to have. Many parallels can be drawn from this point-of-view: Kartel’s bleaching spree being seen as his loss of “blackness” through acquired wealth bothers the dominant fractions similar to a poor ghetto yout’ turned rich moving “uptown.” The long-standing parameters are being breached. However, the individuals who feel betrayed by Kartel’s actions, feel so because their accepted norms are being tampered with. What Kartel has succeeded in doing is creating a class for himself. Why does he need to abide to the established rules and borders passed down from generations past? The Jamaican society is a class-conscious society, and when members of a particular class venture outside, all hell breaks loose. If Kartel feels the need to bleach because of style, social acceptance, or even just the curiosity of seeing himself as a browning, it all boils down to him defying the controlling laws that have subjugated the Jamaican society for centuries. Rage against the machine Kartel…Bad man a still bad man!!!!
Racquel, thanks for the comment! Love your line: What Kartel has succeeded in doing is creating a class for himself! Your dual meaning of “class” sums things up perfectly!
[...] of class rank. See my blog post “Coloring with Cake Soap” all about bleaching and Vybz Kartel: http://blogs.jamaicans.com/ordinarya/2011/03/25/coloring-with-cake-soap/. I argue that middle-class antagonism towards bleaching has to do with a resentment towards [...]
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