For the most part, it’s good advice to tell people to follow their dreams. In our darker moments, a lot of dreams can seem impossible to attain and some helpful encouragement from someone who knows what we’re capable of can make the difference between achieving it and abandoning it.
But, as sad as it is to say, it can be outright irresponsible to encourage people towards certain dreams. For instance, if someone dreamed of being a breatharian who only subsists on air and sunlight, encouraging them is, as The Guardian reported , the same as sentencing them to die of dehydration and starvation.
Although what we’re talking about today isn’t so obviously lethal as that, it still involves the use of dangerous substances for questionable reasons.
Three years ago, Martina Big was a blonde, aspiring model from Germany.
Although she told the British TV show This Morning that she liked her “natural blonde beauty,” she also said she admired the looks of black women enough that she wanted to become one herself.
And so, two years ago, she got into contact with someone who offered injections of a synthetic hormone called Melanotan to darken her skin.
She received three injections of the drug, which she said not only affected her skin, but also changed her eye color and made her hair grow in curlier and darker.
She also underwent a series of surgeries, including one to make her lips fuller, but her attempt to change into a black woman wasn’t entirely cosmetic.
She said she was invited to Kenya to learn about African history and culture and lived there for several weeks.
While there, she filmed a video she later posted to YouTube in which she was baptized with the name Malaika Kubwa (Swahili for “Big Angel”).
She believes this experience is what confirmed her transformation into “a real African woman.”
While she went through all of these changes, she married a man named Michael who wants to transform in the same way she does.
As Martina told This Morning , they had the same number of Melanotan injections at around the same time, but they apparently affected her body more than his.
Although her story as a whole is controversial, one statement she made caused a particular ripple across social media.
Namely, she said that her doctor told her that if her and Michael do have a child, that child will also share her dark skin.
Host Holly Willoughby asked how that was genetically possible and whether Martina would still feel connected to them if they were born white.
To that, Martina said, “It’s a mix of Michael and me. I’m pretty sure it will be black or milk chocolate or a little bit light, it doesn’t matter.”
Like Willoughby, Twitter users seemed to dispute that her baby will naturally have the same melanin in their skin as Martina had injected into her.
Moreover, that description of the baby as potentially “milk chocolate” did little to win people over to her argument that she is now an African woman.
In fact, most of the comments took as much issue with that choice of phrasing as Martina’s claim itself.
What doesn’t help is that the doctor who apparently told Martina this would happen wasn’t named, so it’s hard to determine if they actually said her child would be black.
In fact, there are a lot of unanswered questions that are important to determining that doctor’s credibility.
For instance, did they know that she and Michael darkened their skin with a substance that is not approved by the FDA in both the U.S. and illegal in the U.K. because it has never been safety tested?
The British National Health Service strongly cautions against using Melanotan at all because the full effect it can have on the human body is not yet known.
So if a doctor confidently told her her baby would be black and expressed none of these concerns, they would seriously need to demonstrate how they know this and could be engaging in malpractice regardless.
h/t: This Morning
Martina’s controversy comes on the heels of another white woman who is under fire for claiming blackness as her own.
Rachel Dolezal gained international notoriety after being exposed by her own parents in June of 2015.
Prior to that, Rachel had changed her name to Nkechi Amare Diallo, and gained so much traction as a “civil rights leader” that she went on to become the president of the N.A.A.C.P in Spokane, Washington.
The issue in Rachel Dolezal’s case was not only one of controversy, but of financial fraud.
She received hundreds of dollars in gifts each month from friends, but more importantly — and illegally — she funneled $84,000 through welfare fraud, and falsifying records for public assistance.
By imitating blackness and misrepresenting her race on documents, Rachel Dolezal cheated actual women of color out of assistant that is set in place to offset the inequalities in society.
A quick example is shown above — Black women earn $20/hour less than White men and $13/hour less than White women in Atlanta, GA.
This appropriation and leveraging of blackness, in conjunction with the privileges that come with being white, are a dangerous yet surprisingly common combination.
Blackfishing — the act of non-black people cherry-picking characteristics like skin tone, full lips, and hairstyles like cornrows or locs — is widespread across social media influencers.
This term emerged after a Swedish model, Emma Hallberg, was called out on Twitter for darkening her skin. While she claims that her skin tone comes from sun exposure, the internet seems unconvinced.
Christina Sikalias, a Melbourne-based influencer, was later accused of wearing makeup several shades darker than her own skin, and for wearing traditional hair braids.
The issue at hand with Martina Big, Rachel Dolezal, and the countless influencers identifying or imitating blackness is the same for all three — these people are benefiting from a culture that they have never shared the experiences or inequalities of.
It’s crazy what people will do to achieve their dreams — and for Martina Big, that includes bypassing genetics to have a black baby.
It seems like a long shot! But then again, transforming from a white woman into a black woman seemed pretty out there too.
