DUDU OSUN CAN BREAK YOUR SKIN

-A Skincare Fallacy.

Image belongs to duduosun_ngr

I made a funny TikTok video addressing how honestly exhausted I was with the plethora of skincare enthusiasts spitting on black soap.

I had honestly seen enough, nothing would ever convince me that the OG African black soap was not that girl.

Back in 2019, I had been attacked by what I thought was the worst ever skin issue of my life.

When I look back at the time, I still cannot tell what had caused the acne attacks. Not only was I at peace and well-rested, but I had been neat, maybe not a freaky type of neat but neat either way.

My beddings were steadily washed, I wasn’t on drugs, and I was not smoking.

My hormones were raging on their own and nobody thought too much of it except me, which is another issue I had to factor in.

For the first time in my life, I had considered the possibility that I could morph into someone ugly.

Needless to say, this was my initial introduction to the social media skincare community.

I was a broke eighteen(18) year old, scared of the total amount of beautifully packaged skincare products so I didn’t dare look too much into those.

However, I had tomatoes, sugar, we had four aloe vera plants growing in our garden, honey in our pantry, a neighbor with a lime tree in her backyard, palm kernel oil in two gallons, coconut oil in a bottle, and turmeric powder in our spice cabinet.

If you follow the skincare DIY(Do It Yourself) community, you should know now that I had enough within my grasp to start an organic skincare brand.

Did I forget to mention that my mom got gifted an entire Baco bag of raw black soap – ironically the raw one of the said black soap is white? So let’s call it white soap for this stage and my dad is what I like to call a shea butter warrior.

As much as I’d love to tell you that I went straight into production and became a skincare mogul, every mogul has their early beginnings, their starting stories, mine included a ridiculous attempt of pouring sugar on sliced tomatoes and scrubbing my face with that harsh jargon.

It would’ve worked if my face skin was made of the same material my lip skin was made of but my acne doubled and so did my self-hate.

You would think I could tell the issue with my routine, but I couldn’t.

Thank you to Esther, if you ever remember or see this, we had a conversation one time about how sugar scrub should never have been used on the face. That was the point I realized I had dug the ground I was burying myself in.

To cut a long story short, I graduated a bit from that and tried to integrate what I learned from my cosmetology school and if I didn’t already mention, I’ve been a certified cosmetologist since I was 14.

I’d do egg masks after lime cleansings, and moisturize right after. Turmeric and honey masks yellowed my dark spots, niacinamide companies should’ve been shaking with fear if they knew just how powerful I felt at the effects of this mask.

Eventually, I decided I was informed enough to make my black soap myself. I’d watched enough videos, I made a video too, comment “Aye aye captain” if you would want to see it.

That said decision fueled the beginning of my perfect skin.

Plus my family did not buy a single body soap till the sack bag of white soap finished.

You cannot have Rihanna at home and run out of fenty beauty.

MOISTURIZATION

In 2021, I returned home, down with something called Scabies. I had contracted this from my roommates, both of whom could not tell where they had contracted it from – A story for another day.

I thought I had escaped it until I settled at home during the holidays, ladies and everybody, never pray for a time like this.

The white people’s tubes and drugs did not save me, so we turned to a herb man.

Guess what he gave my father to give me?

-Black soap.

Who would’ve guessed?

That I had applied kerosene on my skin at some point, just to get the itching to stop?

You have no idea.

It does not go without saying that Baba had advised me to heavily moisturize with palm kernel oil and or coconut oil after every bath.

Little did he know that it was already a norm in this house.

This particular black soap was mixed with neem leaf (Neem- A plant Nigerians call dongoyaro).

The Scabies left in under three days, which is less than 72 hours for those in the back of the class.

So not only would the black soap have dried out the scabies in my skin, it would’ve dried my skin too if I hadn’t doused it in as many oils as I could find.

THE FAKE DUDU OSUN SAGA

If I tell you the difference between the making of my soap and the one Baba made for me, would you keep it a secret?

After the soap Baba made got finished I discovered DUDU OSUN the brand.

Good lord what a blessing, this was early 2022, and I was so excited, overjoyed is the right word. I had gotten too lazy and too busy with school to be a mogul, but the universe gave me the perfect little treat in a green and white carton, made in Nigeria for Nigerians. At a very cheap rate.

Five hundred Naira per one of this goodness? Heavens!

Like every goodness I encounter, I share. I told everyone around me with ears and to my absolute surprise, the response was bad.

They said it made them darker, they said it dried their skin. They complained a lot.

So I did my little experiment; I went online and found how to identify real from fake.

Reminded me of the difference between mine and Baba’s black soap formulas.

Baba did not add oils to his soap because he wanted the black soap to be harsh enough to kill the bacteria burrowed beneath my skin.

I added my oils and my shear butter, my black soap formula was sleek and mild on the skin.

The fake Dudu osun bar soaps are usually very acidic and absent of natural oils, making them very hard to the feel, harsh on the skin and unlike Baba’s mixture, without any real healing property.

CONCLUSION

I had influenced so many of my friends to use the Dudu Osun brand based on how dry or oily their skins are.

The pH for black soap depending on the manufacturer’s ingredients varies between 8.9–9.78 which is alkaline, providing cleansing properties for most skin types, and might be too drying for sensitive/dry skin.

We’d experimented and decided that for our skin to remain on the adequately treated and balanced side, a bi-weekly or tri-weekly use would do perfectly fine with proper moisturizing.

To be clear, the reason for this is to state that no Dudu osun slander shall be accepted on this page, not after I’ve taught you how to go about using it correctly.

PEACE.

By the way, my name is Iheoma Peter, I’m a skincare UGC creator on Tiktok and I write about things I can’t stop thinking about. Please clap to like, share and comment what you think💌