Controversial Instagram influencer, Idris Okuneye aka Bobrisky opened up about his reasons for bleaching his skin in Beverly Naya’s producer debut, ‘Skin’.
Bobrisky’s seven-minute-long interview is perhaps the most entertaining and insightful one during the hour-long film. He opened up about his reasons for bleaching and why he believes that others choose to bleach their skin.
He talked about how bleaching was a gateway out of his life as ‘Idris Okuneye’ and how it helped him get the attention he had always craved.
‘I sat down and I thought of what I could do to get people’s attention… it’s about differentiating your brands from other brands so I wanted to bleach because I wasn’t getting the attention I needed’, he said.
The socialite who makes his living from selling bleaching creams also talked about what he believes motivates other people to bleach their skin, rounding it all up to a lack of self-love. He said, ‘People are desperate to use creams because when they see the natural fair, light-skinned girls, they see them as a threat’.
He goes on to say, ‘insecurities are among the things that make people bleach, you are not fully proud of yourself… and they believe that light-skinned girls get more attention’. He continues, ‘the most common reason is – you don’t love yourself, you don’t appreciate yourself how you’ve been made from God.’
In an unexpected twist, he says that he would go back to his dark skin if he could.
‘If I can change one thing about myself, is going back to my complexion. Do you know why? It’s because the stress I use in rubbing my cream every day is terrible. You have to make sure everything rhymes, one place is not darker than the other – your elbow is not dark, your knuckle is not dark. This is f*cking stressful man!’
Beverly Naya and Daniel Etim-Effiong who directed the documentary, capture different reasons why people would bleach their skins and juxtapose it with the stories of naturally fair people like Eku Edewor and Phyno. They successfully show off the different outcomes of bleaching and finally help the viewer come to the conclusion that loving your skin is best.
For Beverly, this counts as a success because she tells CNN only a few days after the Netflix release, that she made the documentary because she wants people to love their skins. She said, ‘I want to inspire young people to love themselves. And I decided to use my documentary, ‘Skin,’ because I didn’t want to restrict my message to a small community. I knew it was important to get the message further’.
