When Takara Allen's Tinder match suggested she'd be much more attractive if she just bleached her skin, she was understandably furious.
So the 22-year-old black woman from Adelaide, Australia, told the man exactly how she felt:
"Don't think I'm a creep and I don't wanna be offensive or anything but I was just looking [at] your insta photos and just curious, but have you ever thought about bleaching your skin??" the unidentified man wrote in a message to her last week. "You'd look so much prettier if you were whiter!"
Allen replied by asking if he'd "ever considered drinking bleach because the world would be so much prettier if you did." She then blocked the guy from all of her social media accounts before taking to Facebook (see above) to completely shut down his suggestion.
"What goes on in people's heads that makes them think this is okay to say to someone?" she asked. "As if people of color don't already struggle enough with the pressure to conform to Eurocentric beauty ideals and standards, people like this add even more."
"If you have to say 'not trying to be offensive/racist/mean' before you say something, DON'T SAY IT," she added.
Allen's post soon went viral, with the vast majority of commenters supporting her stance.
Allen later revealed in a separate Facebook post that she'd received several messages from men who tried "to mansplain to me how I'm too outspoken and how I should 'tone it down.'" Some even labelled her "an attention seeker for speaking about issues that affect me as a black female and more specifically just as a female in general," she added.
Over the weekend, Allen refuted those claims by posting this picture of her 7-year-old self to Instagram:
"I speak about racism in society every day so why does this particular time make me an attention seeker?" she asked. "And why lie about skin bleaching of all things??? I spoke up about it because I was devastated at being told something that happens to others every single day and felt it could bring attention to what other people of color go through every day."
Skin bleaching, which is essentially the chemical lightening of the skin, occurs globally, according to the World Health Organization. And many bleaching products contain mercury, which can result in kidney damage, skin rashes, discoloration, scarring, anxiety and depression.
A spokeswoman for Tinder later informed The Huffington Post that the man who'd contacted Allen has been removed from the app.
This story has been updated to include new information from Tinder.
