Skin: The Documentary

Arriving on Netflix on the heels of a society more torn than ever with increased “Black Lives Matter” protests and the vigor of the black community worldwide as they refuse to be second hand citizens, the timing of Beverly Naya’s Skin: The Documentary couldn’t be more perfect.

Originally released in 2019, the documentary attempts to explore the African connection with our skin. It starts off with snippets from a few familiar faces – Beverly herself, Diana Yekini, and Eku Edewor – as they share a brief narrative on their journey to accepting their own skin types and skin colors.

Eventually, as is expected, the story becomes more about the African/Nigerian woman’s obsession with bleaching. It arrives here and it dwells here for a while. It reveals some pretty eye opening facts about the bleaching industry that many might not otherwise know. It starts off high level with an interview with a doctor explaining what healthy skin is. It then sits with a photographer who deconstructs how our society probably arrived at this place of believing that bright is best. Throughout the duration, information about the vastness of bleaching in our society is interspersed within the film.

‘There’s that part of “I’m insecure, I want to be light”….. at the bottom of it is this sort of poverty in Africa’

One of the most glorious moments in this is the interview with Bobrisky because it presents him/her in a manner that we’ve never considered before. He/she comes off pretty meta and it’s hard to say if it’s ironic or genius. As Bobrisky speaks on the things that causes people (and him/herself included) to want to change their appearance, he/she also speaks on how he/she has managed to capitalize on that. And that capitalization thread continues through from Bobrisky to the ‘working women’ to the founder of a ‘posh’ skincare line. They all capitalize on the beliefs of the society in different ways despite how each of them chooses to justify it. For the working woman it’s either just the world that she’s shown. or the way her ‘man’ prefers for her to be, and for the founder of the skincare company, it’s just marketing.

“People are desperate to use cream because when they see the natural light skin girl, they see them as a threat”

There are a lot of brilliant moments in the editing of this film. Like the way stories are contrasted. For instance, having the photographer follow the make-up artist’s story. Such that when he says that you will still feel like an object even after changing your skin color because you have to be whole from within, it sounds like a response to the make-up artist’s questions from the last shot as to why she still felt empty even after becoming a different color. And also later in the film when Eku and Diana both narrate their stories in the industry you expect one to be victor and the other victim, but from the way it’s mixed in you quickly realize that they are both victims of colorism.

There are even unintentionally interesting bits in this film that allude to the kind of society we live in. For instance you notice how Beverly and her crew seem to need the approval and escort of an agbero (local tout) in order to gain access into certain parts of the city. There’s also the way that Beverly’s dressing changes depending on her environment – it’s more covered in certain environments and more laid back in certain environments. All of these seem to further reiterate that narrative of the effect your environment has on you. Hence, an environment that rewards lighter skin colors almost forces you to be the same way.

There are moments in the film that could have been a lot more than what it panned out to be in the end. The first of which is the scenes with the school children. The moments and the questions seemed very leading and might have worked better as just a pure analysis of the way the average African/Nigerian thinks about skin from a young age. Showing pictures of light skinned versus dark skinned women and asking them to pick who they find more attractive might have worked better than outright asking them why they think dark is not as pretty.

“I am black but not black black”

However, the most glaring of these unfulfilling moments are the final part of the film. In as much as it was endearing to see Beverly in her hometown reminiscing family moments, it was hard to find the relationship between that content and the rest of the film. And the attempt towards the end at equating her grandmother’s old yet sturdy house with her skin was quite feeble.

Watch Online HERE