• Question: is it possible that over the course of your life, without major surgery i could change my skin color (not just white to tanned, like black to white)

    Asked by bakersbannana to Ed, Katie, Sam, Steve, Vera on 19 Jun 2011.
    • Photo: Sam Tazzyman

      Sam Tazzyman answered on 17 Jun 2011:

      Not via evolution, because that only works on changes from one generation to the next, not on changes to an individual during his or her lifetime.

      I don’t know apart from that – I think there are diseases that people get sometimes that change the colour of their skin, and I’m sure there are creams and things that claim to do these things. But I don’t know if they work.

    • Photo: Vera Weisbecker

      Vera Weisbecker answered on 17 Jun 2011:

      Black to white definitely works – there is a disease that does this called “vitiligo”. When Michael Jackson turned paler and paler throughout his career, the reason for this seems to have been this condition although many people thought that he was actively trying to bleach his skin. Normally vitiligo looks really bad, because people have white/pink spots all over their body.
      But without a disease or tattooing, I don’t think you can actually bleach your skin.

    • Photo: Ed Morrison

      Ed Morrison answered on 17 Jun 2011:

      You can change your skin colour a fair bit. Tanning, as you mention, is the most obvious. Tanning increases the production of melanin in your skin, which is a hormone that darkens skin and protects it from the sun. People from Africa have darker skin because they have lots of melanin. It is possible to get skin pretty dark through tanning – some mediterranean people whom we would call “white” have skin as dark as those we would call “black” or certainly mixed race. But biologically speaking, there are no such things as human races, but that’ another story…

      If your skin is naturally dark, I don’t think you can lighten it very much.

      But whatever your skin colour, you can make it redder due to blood flow (e.g. when you exercise or blush), and orangey/yellow by eating lots of fruits and vegetables that contain carotene. Although yellow skin may not sound nice, it usually makes people more attractive. So eat your 5 a day to stay looking good!

    • Photo: Steven Daly

      Steven Daly answered on 18 Jun 2011:

      Evolution happens over a long time period, many generations, so you could not change it by evolution in a life time.

    • Photo: Katie Marriott

      Katie Marriott answered on 19 Jun 2011:

      I agree with the others! Definitely not through evolution.

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