Veteran Nigerian actress Taiwo Ajai-Lycett has advised celebrities and women in general to refrain from skin bleaching in order to look beautiful.
Ajai-Lycett offered the advice during the first edition of the Creative Designers Guild of Nigeria (CDGN) Cultural and Entertainment Exhibition, held at the Citiheight Luxury Hotel in Lagos on Friday.
The program had the theme “Expanding Cultural Creativity Through Entrepreneurship”.
“It’s disheartening to see celebrities and women who should be role models for young people spend enormous sums of money to bleach their skin because they don’t see the beauty in being African,” she said.
However, she urged the celebrities to be proud to be African as there are many businesses that could be created by creatively exploring African beauty.
She noted that filmmakers should also break the habit of always looking for fair-skinned women to appear in their films.
According to her, there is an industry and creativity that is unwittingly killing the nation, while Nigerians look up to the western world to develop practically anything for the nation and pretend to be sophisticated.
“As celebrities and women, we must respect, love and be proud of who we are, starting with the looks. A lot of us don’t want to be dark, we don’t like the color of our skin, that’s what I call low self esteem.
“Our responsibility as women is to represent our race, we are raising children and when they see that we are not happy with our skin and hair, these children believe that bleaching their skin and wigs will make them more beautiful to wear.
“And what breaks my heart the most is that celebrities have this habit of promoting skin bleaching, wearing wigs and even selling them to the public, this is bad and I advise you to break this bad habit.
“If we accept preserving our natural skin and hair, we will be creative with them to improve our economy as a nation because it’s huge business for us, but we’re not aware of it.
“We don’t have to imitate the western world, my advice is that we stay black, brave and beautiful,” she said.
Ms Ajai-Lycett said people need to be cautious about the health effects of skin bleaching as it affects the liver and could lead to skin or liver cancer.
Earlier, Joy Akinyemi said the exhibition would be an annual event to ensure youth are familiar with aspects of the creative industries that could be explored for wealth creation.
She thanked the Lagos State Ministry of Tourism, Arts and Culture and the Lagos State Film and Videos Censors Board for their cooperation in hosting the program.
Veteran Nollywood actor Dr. Tommy Akposheri encouraged youth to explore their innate artistic talent as a weapon for economic growth for themselves and the nation.
He generally advised actors to explore more themes related to love than ritual.
He said they should focus more on telling African history in films to educate children and keep them abreast of the dictates of African culture and history.
Iyen Agbonifo-Obaseki, a film production designer, urged Nigerians to take pride in promoting local prints and cuisines that could boost the country’s economy.
Sewedo Nupowaku, a communications consultant, also urged youth to explore the latest technology to promote the nation’s cultural heritage.
The highlight of the event was, among other things, an exhibition of cultural clothing of different ethnic groups, beads, various forms of make-up and African hairstyles.
(IN)
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