Tiwa Savage revealed that when she was 14, she tried to bleach her skin.

Tiwa disclosed in an interview with Allure Magazine the difficulties and struggles she faced in embracing herself. She described how difficult it was for her to fit in with her white friends when she was a teenager. She said she combined creams with lemon in an attempt to bleach her skin, but her mother discovered this and was upset.

“I actually did try to bleach my skin when I was about, I think 14 or 15 years. Even now I have patches on my back. My mom was cleaning my room and saw the cream that I used to mix with lemons. She wasn’t angry. it was more her disappointment. So I stopped but I was always insecure about being dark” she told Allure magazine.

“I have a platform and I’m digging more into my responsibility for younger people,” she says. . When I started my career I wasn’t embracing who I was fully yet because I was just trying to crack into the market,” she says.

“My first two singles were very American and it wasn’t very African. But then, as time went on, I just started seeing how powerful my platform was and how mothers would say, ‘My little girl really looks up to you.’

“And I feel like there’s so much pressure now and it’s going to get even worse with social media and there needs to be a balance. There need to be some people that are not too perfect. I know we want to look good. I don’t want to be out there looking jacked up, but I also want to look relatable.” she stated.