The color of your skin is dictated by melanin. Efforts to change the color of skin date back to the beginnings of human history, whether it was for something simple like hitting the beach or for more unfortunate social and cultural reasons. Now science has discovered that it turns out all you needed was to use estrogen and progesterone, common sex hormones.
Anybody who’s been pregnant can tell you that one of the side effects is your skin changes color. And it turns out the hormones running through a pregnant woman’s body are the reason why. Researchers exposed a lattice of cells designed to emulate human skin to estrogen, and the longer they were exposed, the more melanin they produced. Progesterone, on the other hand, slowed down melanin production. In fact, a cream developed by the research team quickly darkened the skin of a mouse when tested in the lab.
That said, there are a few drawbacks. Rubbing estrogen and progesterone into your skin probably isn’t the best idea, at the moment because, for example, high levels of estrogen have been linked to higher breast cancer risk and can damage the environment if washed into the water supply. But this does offer dermatologists and researchers a better understanding of how we become different colors, and treat skin conditions like vitiligo. Just hopefully, it won’t be abused by people looking for a dumb Halloween costume.
