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The Natural Beauty of Black Skin Care
- Abla Gorashi
- 1 day ago
- 3 min read
Your skin tells your story—make it a glowing oneYo
In black households, we often found skin lotion and face lotion, oil to work for all types of purposes on our skin. Coconut oil, shea butter, and castor oil are one of the few keys black households use. But most importantly, we can’t forget about Vaseline.
Vaseline in black households was a “luxury” brand. At least for me, it was 100% the most useful body moisturizer to truly work. I don’t remember a time where Vaseline was a brand I was not familiar with. You can say, it was the first skin care brand I’ve ever known. When I think of Vaseline, I think of my grandmother having a tub of it next to her sink in her bathroom. She always used it, and also used it on my hair once. I know that sounds crazy. I was also freaked out. It was when my mom went away to Sudan for over a month, and me and my twin sister needed to moisturize our hair before a family friend could manage to do our hair. With her bare hands, she scraped the vaseline gel and massaged it in our hair. I trusted the process. Never had vaseline on my hair ever since.
When It came to natural ingredient moisturizers, those were first embedded in Africa. For example, many iconic historic leaders to African people, used natural ingredients and are still commonly used in their land today. For example, Cleopatra was known to use milk and honey as a face mask so that her skin can feel soft. In Nigeria, Yoruba people use shea butter and palm oil for their skin. Same with Ghana, Ashanti people use shea butter and coconut oil to protect their skin from sun damage.
Homemade/Natural ingredients on Black Skin
My mother cared a lot about her skin growing up. I would often find her waxing with sugar wax that she made at home, to coffee scrubs, and turmeric face masks. In my early teenage years, turmeric face masks had a chokehold on me and my twin sister. We used it to make our skin lighter (not to look white) but to get rid of dark patches in our skin. It made my skin soft, but when it comes to lighting my skin, it was no help. Luckily, I’m dark skin enough where it didn’t make my face orange. When it came to shea butter, I specifically remember my mom getting a full jar of it from a random neighbor who’s African selling them to others. We often used it for our hair a few times. Regardless, it was rare to find it finished.
While natural skin care has made a tremendous difference in our body, I often buy creams I feel are natural for my skin because the description on the store bought bottle seemed like it is. What ends up happening after using those products, my skin would feel smooth but still dry. You can’t see any flakes, but my skin felt a sense of tightness. Think of botox on your forehead, that's what it felt on my skin. The market has promoted products that harm our skin rather than focus on our needs. Even so, they are marketing cream that is supposed to help “skin tones” only to have a risk of damaging our skin because ingredients like hydroquinone and mercury.
Truly after generations and generations, our natural remedies still help our skin, regardless of brands being pushed to us for purchase.
"Your skin tells a story-make it a glowing one"-Booksy
Work Citation:
Written by: Abla Gorashi-Guest Writer & blogger (ablagorashi.com)
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