https://www.instagram.com/p/BhKHxyuAkBN/?taken-by=keyshiacole
Fans of Keyshia Cole did a double take Wednesday, April 4 when she posted a side of a photo of her from years ago with a snap during a recent event in Florida.
While the meme contained the motivational message to push through despite feelings of defeat, several fans zeroed in on one thing — Cole’s lighter skin tone — and they let the singer know what they’d been speculating.
“We need that old you back sis,” someone commented. “Hold the bleach.”
“She bleached and she having a baby,” another guessed.
“Wow.. as much as I like Keyshia Cole, her post here clearly shows us how she has bleached her natural darkness away … to now look half cast,” someone else said. “But 98 percent of the industry does it, not just her.”
“The bleach is real,” a user simply wrote.
Still, some weren’t convinced skin bleaching was a factor.
“I think it may be her makeup shade,” someone wrote. “I don’t think she bleached her skin.”
“I do not believe she’s bleached her skin at all,” someone else said. “Appears she just had a tan in the first pic and little to no makeup vs. the second pic.”
“I’m shocked that Black people always talking about somebody bleaching, like when I was in elementary through high school I was very dark because I was always in the sun,” someone else offered. “Now I’m older I don’t stay in the sun, so I am lighter now and people always ask me, ‘How did I get so light? Did I bleach?'”
And Cole wasn’t here for the bleach talk herself, she wrote in response to someone denying the singer bleaches, “and yet they still missed the overall message.