Skin Ironies: The milky wants tan and dusky gets lightened
A white woman with an umbrella was once a common sight due to the fear of getting tanned. There is a twist in the story with a lot of fair-skinned women going for Self-Tanning & Bronzing. Just as skin lighteners help the black beauties even out their skin and shine bright, a sunless tanner can help conceal uneven areas and give the milky whites a dusky look.
The market is flooded with skin-lightening and tanning products, but out of all that is trending, we need to first find out that how they actually work. You may or may not know that your skin color is determined by the amount of melanin present in your skin. Melanin is a pigment produced by specialized cells called melanocytes, and those who have more melanin have a duskier skin. Most often the melanin in your skin is a matter of your genetic makeup, but to an extent, even the sunlight exposure, hormones, skin damage, and exposure to certain chemicals may affect your melanin production.
Skin lighteners are therefore made using an active ingredient or a combination of ingredients that reduces the amount of melanin in the skin where it is applied. Some use the power of natural ingredients like the Makari products with Argan Oil and Carrot Oil and other skin lighteners use drugs such as steroids and retinoic acid. There is one more element used in many skin lighteners called Hydroquinone. Make sure your skin lightener contains not more than 2% that chemical and 4% if it is a prescription form. 
On the other hand, we find white people mostly in the western region of the world, have started to love tanned skin that is relatively a darker tone. We see loads and loads of people there taking sun baths, on the beaches and roof tops, just to get that effect naturally. But there are even products that offer sunless tanning in a much safer way. To have a better understanding, let’s once again get into our skin.
Do you know that skin is made up of two main layers– the epidermis on the outside and the dermis on the inside? Whether it is sun tanning or sunless-tanning, the epidermis is where the action happens. The epidermis is further made up of layers. The deepest layer of the epidermis, called the stratum basale (basal layer), which is affected during sun tanning while the stratum corneum is the outermost layer of the epidermis that is affected by most sunless-tanning products. The most effective products for sunless- or self-tanning may contain dihydroxyacetone (DHA) as the active ingredient. This DHA which is a colorless sugar then interacts with the dead cells located in the stratum corneum of the epidermis and the color change occurs. This change usually lasts about five to seven days from the initial application.
If you have anything more to know about any of the two products you are considering, talk with your doctor or pharmacist to be certain to work for you, safely. Your dermatologist may also recommend some easy home remedies if he is a wise man or other treatment options, such as chemical peels, microdermabrasion, and laser treatments if self-tanning and skin whiteners are not right for you to use at this point of time.
So, the need of skin whitening or skin darkening in our view is beyond looking good or attractive. Go ahead and get your desired skin tone evenly all over.