Shal­iza Has­sanali

From dark­en­ing of the pri­vate parts to sag­ging vagi­nas due to loss of elas­tic­i­ty–these are the harsh re­al­i­ties which many women face.It's a prob­lem that make self-con­scious women feel in­se­cure and un­com­fort­able with their part­ners or spous­es, and some are pre­pared to go to any lengths to cor­rect it. Men, it seems, are no dif­fer­ent as they, too, are grav­i­tat­ing to prod­ucts that promis­es to light­en the colour of their pe­nis, scro­tum, anus and un­der­arm.

The hottest rage for light­en­ing the vagi­na, breast, nip­ple, anus, un­der­arms, pe­nis and scro­tum is Pink Pri­vates In­ti­mate Area Light­en­ing Cream, which is not sold in phar­ma­cies or cos­met­ic shops but on­line, through www.alam­od­ett.com­List­ed at a re­duced price of TT$299.99 for a one-ounce bot­tle, the prod­uct which is made in Amer­i­ca, promis­es to rid skin dis­coloura­tions in eight weeks.

The Web site, pinkpri­vates.org, says its prod­uct does not con­tain dan­ger­ous in­gre­di­ents such as hy­dro­quinone, mer­cury or steroids.Throngs of peo­ple, both men and women, have been pur­chas­ing the prod­uct through bank de­posits at FC branch­es and Pay­Pal, which al­lows pay­ments and mon­ey trans­fers via the In­ter­net. The prod­uct is de­liv­ered to the cus­tomer with­in two work­ing days.

Re­views from three cus­tomers who pur­chased the prod­uct on Ama­zon.com for US$24.98 showed mixed re­views.Two cus­tomers said they no­ticed a slight change in skin tone, while an­oth­er de­scribed it as just a mois­turis­er. This, how­ev­er, has not stopped peo­ple from de­mand­ing the bleach­ing agent or a host of oth­ers on the mar­ket.

'Bleach­ing crea­ma tem­po­rary so­lu­tion'

Es­ther Primus, man­ag­er of Liv­ing Lovel­ly, a weight-man­age­ment, body-sculpt­ing and aes­thet­ic cen­tre in Curepe, is ad­vis­ing women not to use bleach­ing agents on their pri­vate parts.Bleach­ing prod­ucts have been around for years, Primus said, and it is high­ly pop­u­lar with women. She, how­ev­er, said, "Bleach­ing cream is on­ly a tem­po­rary so­lu­tion. There are oth­er ways to light­en your skin, one of them is with ma­chines."

Primus said a woman's vagi­na be­comes dis­coloured/dark­er due to con­stant shav­ing."Al­so de­pend­ing on the type of soap you use your vagi­na be­comes dark­er," said Primus, a li­censed prac­ti­cal nurse.As the vul­va los­es its elas­tic­i­ty and col­la­gen, Primus said the skin al­so be­comes dis­coloured.She rec­om­mend­ed bak­ing so­da to make skin tones clear.

Primus al­so sug­gest­ed sim­pler and more ef­fec­tive ways–the use of vi­t­a­mins, min­er­als or non in­va­sive surgery–to tight­en and light­en the skin.

Kalloo: It's a men­tal thing

Ob­ste­tri­cian and gy­nae­col­o­gist Dr Sherene Kalloo said while bleach­ing agents con­tain dif­fer­ent in­gre­di­ents, two in par­tic­u­lar–mer­cury and hy­dro­quinone–are harm­ful and can cause can­cers."I would not rec­om­mend a pa­tient use a prod­uct that con­tains those in­gre­di­ents."If a pa­tient thinks they have dark ar­eas that need to be whitened, Kalloo ad­vised that they vis­it a doc­tor to en­sure they do not have a pre-ex­ist­ing med­ical prob­lem.

Kalloo said ery­thras­ma (a skin dis­ease that caus­es brown, scaly skin patch), ge­net­ic fac­tors, yeast in­fec­tions and Ad­di­son's dis­ease can cause dark­en­ing of the skin.She urged peo­ple with dis­coloured skin not to buy and use creams, sprays or gels over the counter or on­line since they may have some pre-ex­ist­ing con­di­tion and may cause them­selves more harm than good.In the past, Kalloo said peo­ple used lac­tic acid, a peel­ing agent.

"I think it is more of a men­tal thing...Some peo­ple would want to change, not for them­selves but their part­ners...for sat­is­fac­tion oth­er­wise. I have been hear­ing peo­ple more and more ask­ing about the use of bleach­ing agents, and what do I think about it."Asked if she would ad­vise her pa­tients to use bleach­ing creams, Kalloo said once the prod­uct has no prop­er­ties to harm the con­sumer and will help a cou­ple im­prove their re­la­tion­ship and one­self "ba­si­cal­ly there is no harm in it be­ing used."

Health Min­is­ter:

Bleach­ing of pri­vate part­sa con­sti­tu­tion­al right

Health Min­is­ter Dr Fuad Khan said while it would be dif­fi­cult to po­lice every­thing that en­ters the coun­try, he was more con­cerned about con­sumers not read­ing the la­bels of health prod­ucts."The most we can do is to ed­u­cate and in­form the pub­lic. We can't seize and ap­pre­hend be­cause then we will be go­ing against cer­tain rules and reg­u­la­tions of trade. At the end of the day, when you look at what is hap­pen­ing, the sys­tems of these things and every­thing need a law to change it."

Khan said if peo­ple want to bleach their pri­vate parts "to make it look what­ev­er colour, that is their right ac­cord­ing to our Con­sti­tu­tion. If some­one choses to have their pri­vate parts bleached, no mat­ter what I say they will still do that."Khan said on­line pur­chas­es must pass through Cus­toms and Ex­cise."Peo­ple have to take re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for them­selves," he said.

If you must bleach pri­vate parts:

�2 Vis­it a doc­tor to en­sure you do not have a pre-ex­ist­ing med­ical prob­lem

�2 Make sure that you find a prod­uct that will work safe­ly and ef­fec­tive­ly

�2 Make sure that you find a prod­uct that does not use any po­ten­tial­ly dan­ger­ous in­gre­di­ents such as hy­dro­quinone

Some light­en­ing creams list­ed on the In­ter­net:

Pink Pri­vates, Pink Daisy, In­ti­light, Se­cret Brights, Dr Pinks, South Beach Gel, Gen­tle In­ti­mate Light­en­ing Cream, Bio­fade In­ti­mate Light­en­ing Cream