She didn’t really bleach her skin, did she?
A recent photo of Serena Williams is drawing accusations that she used skin-lightening treatments.
She’s show down these claims. Her husband is shooting down these claims.
But some aren’t buying that it’s a question of lighting and photography. Take a look for yourself:
This discourse began with a wedding photo
To start from the beginning, Venus Williams is married!
Initially, she and actor-producer Andrea Preti held a wedding in Ischia, Italy in September of lat year.
On December 19, just three months and one day later, they officially married.
Naturally, the guest list included family — like her sister, Serena.
Serena and her husband, Alexis Ohanian, posed with their two daughters, 8-year-old Olympia and 2-year-old Adira.
As you can see in the photo above, both girls wore matching powder blue dresses where Serena wore white.
(Remember, the rule to never wear white or off-white to a wedding has a major exception: the bride’s permission)
Anyway, the entire family looked beautiful. Especially Serena herself.
“Joy does not always roar sometimes it whispers. It important to savor those sweet moments…” she captioned photos of the event as she posted them.
Serena explained: “I love this picture so I wanted to share it with you.”
Did she bleach her skin?
Unfortunately, a series of comments accused Serena of using skin-lightening treatments.
Skin bleaching is an extremely complex topic — though the impact of it is very simple: it’s bad.
It is a result of racism, yes. But the practice is also a result of colorism, some of which predated European colonialism and the invention of racism.
These bleaching products range from creams to a series of laser treatments. Even if they weren’t bad for you, these are culturally and socially damaging practices that reinforce extremely harmful concepts.
Did Serena do it? She’s denied it in the past. And so, too, does husband Alexis Ohanian.
Alexis, who is for some reason still using the cesspool previously known as Twitter, tweeted a response to the speculation about his wife’s skin.
“Where are all the comments from idiots who don’t understand how photography lighting works,” he challenged.
One user replied: “Alexis wants Black people to believe we don’t know what photography lighting looks like vs blatant skin lightening.”
He fired back: “Or: photos from the same event can look different based on lighting.”
For the record, lighting, photography equipment, and makeup are almost always more likely explanations for someone appearing to have different skin tone.
Not always making good choices is not the same as making EVERY mistake possible
To be clear, Serena has made controversial choices in the past.
For example, she has confessed to using GLP-1 injections, even doing paid promotions for the controversial luxury weight loss products.
As an adult, she chose to become baptized as a Jehovah’s Witness. This has drawn nuanced criticism from Jehovah’s Witnesses survivors, though others defend Serena by pointing out that she has likely only seen a watered-down version of the controversial sect.
However, those difficult-to-understand decisions do not mean that she has also bleached her skin.
The 2015 “the dress” incident should really have shown more people that their impressions of a photo at first glance are not always accurate.