''White means pure''- Dencia continues to defend her bleaching cream ''Whitenicious''

Asked what the product's name meant to her, Nigerian and Cameroonian singer Dencia appeared to contradict herself by saying: 'White means pure, not necessarily skin, but in general.'
She insisted that the cream is only for covering blemishes, despite an advertising campaign showing her entire body appearing lighter, adding: 'Some people they don't feel confident, they don't feel pure, they don't feel clean with dark spots.'

Critics have branded the product an 'abomination' saying it teaches young 'girls of colour' to be ashamed of their skin.
In an interview with Channel 4, Dancia was asked whether she thought the message behind the product was that being white looked better than being black.
She replied: 'I was not selling that message, the media are selling that message. I didn't say, buy the cream and look like Dancia.

'I said seven day, fast acting dark spot remover. It's called reading comprehension. If people missed that class then it's not my fault.
'If they think that their whole body is a dark spot then fine, because that's not how I feel.'
Among Dancia's critics is oscar-winning actress Lupita Nyong'o who spoke out against racism in beauty and fashion and warned young black girls not to use bleaching products.
Nyong'o, star of 12 Years A Slave, admitted that when she was younger she wanted to wake up 'just a little bit lighter', because she was ashamed of her dark skin.

On the controversy surrounding Lupita’s speech in which she was mentioned, she says “In this age in 2014 you think that if a little girl wrote a letter she wouldn’t come out and say that it was her. Someone in her camp sent me an email saying that the letter was made up.

Let me tell you something about us black people, we always like to bring each other down. I’m building an orphanage in Cameroon. There are amazing things I’m doing with orphanages. I do all these things and I don’t talk about it because I believe it’s God’s work that I’m doing and the bible says that when you give with your right hand, your left hand should not know. 

 

When you look at Lupita, she has all this publicity, what is she doing for charity, what does she stand for, what is she supporting. Then you look at the small girl Denica, she’s the black girl from Africa, she’s probably ignorant and she doesn’t know what she’s doing. Let me jump on her and get some media, because at the end of the day she got media off of it. When people get publicity they want more.

At the end of the day, I don’t care about her story and I don’t want to talk about her or say anything negative against her. We just talked about her, did I say anything negative. I thank her for the publicity.” she says.

On the much buzzed about documentary “Light Girls” for OWN, Oprah Winfrey’s Network, she says “I feel like they want to take advantage of Whitenicious. They need the show, they need me but you know what, if the pay is good, I’ll do it…The questions they want to ask me they can ask Rihanna, Beyonce and Nicki Minaj because they have all lightened their skin. But since they are bigger, you can’t ask them and you want to ask me so, pay me.”

 

However, Phinniah Ikeji, from Black Role Models UK, said: 'This is about the young girls.They see you, they love your music, they love you as a person and they have seen that you were darker before and now you're much lighter, what's the message going to be to them?
'They're going to think, OK I want to be like her as well and then that affects their self esteem.'

Commenting on the video on YouTube, user AC MC said: Indians and Africans and people of colour need to stop trying to be white and be happy with themselves. This woman needs mental help.'
Another user, tpl89 added: 'Fake accent, fake hair, fake skin colour. It's so sad, she must really hate her African heritage.'