“Why is it always those who have light skin that win,” asks a young Senegalese man tasked with handing out flyers for a local beauty pageant.

The setting is Dakar, where the newly-released film Timpi Tampa tells the story of a young man, Khalilou, whose mother is diagnosed with cancer, potentially from using skin-lightening products contaminated with mercury. He disguises himself as a woman named Leila to join a beauty pageant dominated by light‐skin standards, with the intent to challenge that system.

The film highlights how global efforts to remove mercury from cosmetics – still widely used in whiteners – need to go hand-in-hand with changes in social attitudes that combat “colourism” – that is the still prevalent idea that whiter skin has inherently greater beauty than darker brown and black colours. 

The film was aired in an unusual evening at the intersection of art and environmental policy on the margins of the recently concluded COP6 Conference of Parties to the Minamata Convention. The latest COP, which aims to eliminate harmful uses mercury, a highly toxic metal for both health and the environment, ended on 7 November with a decision to step up advocacy and action around the cosmetics issue.

The side-event was organized by the Global Health Platform and Global Health Centre of the Geneva Graduate Institute. It was co-hosted by the United Nations Environment Programme; World Health Organization; Global Mercury Partnership; Biodiversity Research Institute, and the Global Environment Facility. 

While mercury is banned in cosmetics, it continues to be used widely, especially in poor-quality and artisanal products commonly used for skin lightening. At the recent COP-6, countries committed to clamping down further on the availability of mercury-containing cosmetics as well as cross-border trade. 

Mercury’s toxic compounds can have a range of impacts on human health affecting nervous, digestive, immune systems and also on lungs, kidneys, skin and eyes, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). For the next COP7, scheduled in 2027, the WHO has also been invited to prepare a strategy advising countries about measures to prevent the use, manufacture, import and export of mercury-contaminated cosmetics.

See related story: Dental Amalgam Set to Be Phased out by 2034 to Reduce Toxic Mercury Exposures

Growing market for skin-lightening products

“For us in Geneva, it might not be so obvious, but skin-lightening products are a growing market. The estimated figure was $9.2 billion in 2023 and it’s expected to almost double to 16 million in 2032 with Asia Pacific dominating the market for the production and end use,” said Ludovic Bernaudat, Senior Programme Management Officer at Chemicals and Health Branch, United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP). “People use these products because in many societies lighter skin means better job, better prospect of marriage, and means beauty or status.”  

Skin whitening products with mercury easy to access

In poor communities in Gabon, like other places in West Africa, people often resort to cosmetic bleaching as a way to lighten their skin, said Serge Molly Allo’o Allo’o, Project Coordinator working on eliminating mercury from skin-lightening products at WHO’s Gabon office.

“When you go to the market, you have cosmetic bleaching [is] everywhere, everywhere. And that is very cheap. But that is why in Gabon, we set up a regulatory framework to ban this kind of importation, most of which is informal,” he said.

The problem is not just in Africa. Skin bleaching is also widespread in Asia and Latin America. Most of these countries still linger under a colonial legacy where whiter skin was the standard of beauty. This standard remains embedded in large segments of the population, experts said.

UNEP is developing a project with 13 countries in Africa as well as with five countries in Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean to address regulations around mercury-containing cosmetics, said Bernaudat, adding that the agency hopes to gradually expand that footprint “so that we can make a difference at the global level.”

Using art to leverage awareness

While regulation is critical to limiting the availability and movement of mercury-contaminated cosmetics, consumer preferences need to change to address the root problem – why these products are purchased in the first place.

And art can help ‘detoxify’ such perceptions of beauty. 

In Timpi Tampa, a film by Senegalese director Adama Bineta Sow, social pressures around “colourism” are discussed through the story of Khalilou, who finds out that skin bleaching caused his mother’s skin cancer. He disguises himself as a young woman, Leila, and enters a beauty contest to encourage women with dark skin to be proud of their colour

“Now, most of [the] women in my country… have light skin. It’s not the[ir] natural skin. And I’ve always wanted to go to each of them and to tell them you were already beautiful the way you were before,” Sow said during the interaction following the screening of her movie at the event.

Sow said she wrote the movie out of her experiences growing up in Senegal. Although she never tried lightening cosmetics herself, she witnessed first-hand the harmful beauty standards and social pressures that can lead many teenage girls and women to use such products – including ones that may contain mercury.

“When we are not able to talk with each other, when words are not enough… I think that art speak[s] clear, loud,” said Angélica Dass.  

Dass is the creator of the exhibit Humanae, which also addresses the topic of colourism.  As a part of her project Dass took 5,000 portraits across 39 cities and 20 countries capturing her subjects’ bare shoulders, skin and hair, in natural, unadorned poses. 

“The most important information that you find about these people is exactly the lack of information. Anything that you put in these people just belongs to your own stereotypes,” said Dass, who also participated in the evening panel discussion.   

And changing the colour of ones skin or hair doesn’t provide an authentic escape from the related social prejudices of race and ethnicity, Dass pointed out. For instance, when a curly-haired girl in the picture uses skin whitening, her identity still remains that of a black girl, Dass observed, suggesting that identity needs to be embraced rather than modified superficially.

The key is to teach new generations to understand and celebrate who they are.  The amount of melanin someone has in their skin should never be a dehumanizing factor.

Tackling colourism an important human rights issue

While the government can enact laws and regulations, artists like Dass and Sow can impact deeply perceptions of beauty and thus contribute to behavioural change, Bernaudat said, adding that looking at the issue of mercury in cosmetics through the lens of human rights can also help address the issue.

“People need to have the same chance, wherever they look like, whatever gender they are, etc, and that’s where we need to start. And I think from this we need to change behaviours,” he said. 

At the same time, legislation, when well crafted, can help with accelerating this behavioural change, He pointed out, citing UNEP’s work with The Minamata Convention on Mercury as one such example.

“That is an extraordinary international treaty that UNEP pushed through with an entire health component,” said Ellen Rosskam, Coordinator, International Geneva Global Health Platform and the Global Health Centre, who moderated the conversation.

“And that is something really exceptional.”

Image Credits: Timpi Tampa trailer , By arrangement, Global Health Centre, Geneva Graduate Institute, IMDB, Angélica Dass.