Around the early 2010’s when #teamlightskin and #teamdarkskin were still trending, my mother found 1950’s Ebony and JET magazines in pristine condition. Aside from being great artifacts of black design history, what struck me was the number of ads for skin bleaching and lightening creams. Globally, highly-melanated Black and brown people put their bodies at risk in an attempt to achieve the social capital that systemic colorism bars from them. Though skin bleaching is a popular modern concept, it’s rarely discussed how far back this practice goes. For the piece, I scanned the Ebony advertisements, printed them on newsprint, cut out the letters to create the popular hashtag. I then bleached the bottom half of the characters and hung them each on a clothesline to further illustrate the content of the characters. (2013)