Did you hear about the quiet revolution for black skin care? Indeed. There’s a quiet Beauty Revolution taking place when it comes to Black Skin Care. It’s all about transforming your skin into this beautiful flawless looking canvas.  More importantly, it’s about loving the beauty of your blackness, all of you, from head to toe.

Most of the challenges I hear you’re concerned about are hyperpigmentation, uneven skin tone, dark spots, dark circles under the eyes, and puffiness under the eyes.

I’ve been on the planet for a few years. As far back as I can remember I didn’t see these kinds of challenges with black skin or skin of color or dark complexions that I see in today’s world.

The only skin challenge that I saw was the skin of my grandmother’s friend. She had vitiligo. Other than that, whether it was a classmate, a family member or neighbor, everybody had beautiful skin.

So what happened?

The more we became part of the changing World, the more we began to see challenges with our skin.   Throughout the years, Black women were able to handle the stress that came at them. At least it seemed that way.

Now, mind you, I’m not talking about women who lived a leisurely life. I’m talking about women who cleaned houses, we’re cooks or nannies.

I was privileged to know my great-grandmothers from both sides of the family. These were women who were born during slavery. Their skin was soft and beautiful.  It glowed and they did not have acne or skin breakouts. The same applied to great aunts.

My generation was part of the generation that was first in Corporate America. That brought a lot of stress. With stress comes a lot of ways of coping. There’s overeating, eating the wrong foods, not to mention alcoholism, and recreational drugs.

What could be more stressful than slavery?

I think it was more of how we handled the stress.

These habits and lifestyle changes contributed to what we are now experiencing with our skin care challenges.

I think one of the main things that the ancestors/elders had as an advantage, is that they prepared their own food. There was no eating out, no fast foods, and there weren’t a lot of chemicals in the foods.

So this quiet Revolution that we’re seeing is all about returning to or building upon what we know to have worked for melanated skin from the past.

We had our Annie Malone, Madame C.J. Walker and other pioneers in Black Skin Care. A lot of our problem was in not remaining true to who we were. Not loving the beautiful melanated skin that we came to the planet with.

So when we’re making an attempt to look like someone else’s complexion, we then have challenges and problems mounting on top of each other.

When you look at the history of products for melanated skin, you’ll find that the products contained ingredients that would burn your skin or cause breakouts.

The Quiet Revolution About Black Skin Care

The quiet Revolution that’s taking place now, is one in which black women are returning to your love of self. When this happens you’re also returning to Mother Nature for your ingredients. You’re looking for products that are known to work for your complexion as well as your hair.

You’re looking for companies that are formulating products with you in mind. So when a company says I’m black owned, with products are for black women or black men, your job is to make sure they’re not front men or women being paid just say that it’s their company.

Often times when this happens the ingredients are not ingredients that are going to be beneficial to your skin and it’s care.

Part of the quiet revolution is to Learn and understand your skin. It will always tell you what it likes and what it doesn’t like. You eat the wrong food it’s possible you’re going to get a break out.

Put the wrong formulation on your skin and it will tell you it doesn’t like it either.

Personalizing Your Black Skin Care Regimen

When you learn what’s beneficial to your skin, you will begin to personalize your products that you buy. Your cleanser may be one that’s green tea based. Green tea is known to be a great antioxidant for your skin.

You will also begin to incorporate serums into your skin care regimen. Now why would you want to incorporate a serum into your regimen? Well, first of all, serums tend to be formulated to target and deliver solutions for specific challenges such as pigmentation issues or dehydration in your skin.

I remember reading an article that gave a good analogy and they said: “with a serum it’s like seeing the difference between taking a multivitamin which provides a little bit of everything – vitamin B complex – vitamin C- folic acid – vitamin D – or selecting an individual supplement that will deliver more of the dose of what you’re looking for.

When you incorporate a serum into your skin care routine what you’re doing is adapting your regimen to create exactly what your skin needs on a daily basis.

As a rule of thumb, most of us will double cleanse our skin. It’s just part of making sure it’s clean. This term double cleansing usually applies to removing your makeup with the first cleanse and then going back and doing a second cleanse to make sure that you know all of the residue is gone from your skin. It’s also referred to as the barefaced cleanse, because now you’ve removed all of your cosmetics, leaving your face is in its natural state.

Terms like exfoliating and skin polishing, refer to removing dead skin cells. When you exfoliate and remove the dead skin cells, what you see is the natural light that’s part of your beauty.  You’ll also feel the softness and suppleness of your skin.

The Quiet Revolution About Black Skin Care Includes Nutrition

Another part of the Quiet Revolution for black skin care, that you might have missed, is water. Why is water so important? We always ask the question how much water should I drink. We’ve been told to drink eight, 8 oz glasses of water per day.

The new rule of thumb is half your body’s weight in ounces of water per day. So, if you’re 130 lbs, you going to divide that by 2 to get half. That’s 65 oz of water which is equivalent to right under 2 liters. In the scheme of things that’s not a lot of water when it comes to maintaining your health and the beauty of your skin.

You can also eat your water that comes from foods. Fruits and vegetables can often hydrate your body twice as effectively as a glass of water. Cucumber is a great example of eating your water because it’s 97% water. The same might apply to watermelon which has been often said is a great  diuretic.

Now that you’ve heard about the quiet revolution about Black Skin Care, tell us what you think.  If you liked what we’ve shared, send the link to a friend.

That’s it for this week.  As always …

Dedicated to Your Beauty,

Juliette Samuel,

Esthetician/Author/Publisher,

Nyraju Skin Care