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Page last updated at 10:05 GMT, Monday, 20 July 2009 11:05 UK

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In pictures: Natural African beauty

"African women, don't lighten your skin. It's a gift from God." These lyrics are a line from a song specially commissioned for a beauty competition with a difference in Ivory Coast. Photo gallery by the BBC's John James.

Only women with natural, untreated skin - confirmed by skin experts - can enter the competition which goes by the name, Miss Authentica. It has now been held twice in the main Ivorian city, Abidjan.

The organisers hope to encourage women to stop using dangerous skin-bleaching products to lighten their complexion and instead celebrate the beauty of their natural skin.

beauty contestant playing the balafon [xylophone]

Skin-bleaching is big business in much of Africa. Proof of this are the many posters of smiling, fair-skinned women holding up the latest pots and tubes of skin-whitening creams that adorn the continent's cities.

The contest organisers say 75% of women in Ivory Coast use skin-whitening creams of some sort. Contestant Bintou Kalou says the products are popular "because these women want to do white and reject black."

Many continue to use the bleaching products despite being aware of the dangers. One of the most common ingredients is hydroquinone, which has been banned in some countries because of claims that it is carcinogenic.

Miss Authentica's 2009 organiser Edmund Etty hopes the competition will help change attitudes to women's skin colour and so discourage women from using these dangerous products.

Edmund Etty blames men for the practice: "It's about men, because men in Ivory Coast... like ladies who change the colour of their skin; they like a light skin."

Miss Authentica seems to be having its intended effect. Edmund Etty says some cosmetic businesses are feeling threatened by the competition.

As the organisers crowned Miss Authentica 2009, they hoped to show the world that African women can be beautiful in the skin they were born with.

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