This essay offers an interpretive textual analysis of newspaper articles,
music lyrics and internet commentaries on skin bleaching in Jamaica, with
a particular focus on dancehall artist Vybz Kartel. I argue that bleached
bodies exemplify a liminal state of embodiment and are not definable
within normative racial and gender frameworks that conceptualise race
and gender as discrete, static identities that are clearly visible on the body.
By disrupting those frameworks, bleached bodies can create room for