Beneath the Surface: A Transnational History of Skin Lighteners

Abstract

In Beneath the Surface: A transnational history of skin lighteners, Lynn M. Thomas offers a dense history of the use and meaning of skin lighteners in South Africa. Thomas rejects a simple narrative where African women and girls turned to skin lighteners out of a desire to be white. Instead, she offers a more complicated history, noting how a preference for lighter/brighter skin tapped into both indigenous and transnational understandings of femininity, beauty, and modernity.

Topics & Concepts