Reclaiming South Asian Beauty
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By Rizwana Zafer
Arpita moved from Chicago to New York when she was 35 years old in order to have more opportunities as a makeup artist. Four years later, Arpita was the makeup artist and hair stylist on a shoot for the March 2022 print issue of Vogue India and Vogue Taiwan.
A team of South Asian artists, photographers, models, and stylists orchestrated the shoot, a rare occurrence in the high fashion world. Entitled “Zameen,” the Urdu word for “land,” the project showcased brown models with brown skin, against neutral earth tones and naturesque sculptures of clouds and soil. Arpita used a combination of drugstore and high end makeup products, depending on what best suited the individual model. If anyone can speak to the struggles of finding the right products for South Asian features, Arpita certainly can.
I met up with Arpita at the Herald Square location of Ulta, the nationwide beauty supply store and hair salon. Arpita had her first brush with the beauty industry while working for Ulta in her early twenties as an undergraduate student.
Her rebellion against western beauty standards began quietly.
When Arpita learned that she could receive extremely discounted makeup as an employee, she slowly but surely started to assemble her beauty kit. Although Ulta didn’t carry many makeup brands that catered to women of color at the time, Arpita filled her kit with cosmetics that worked for her South Asian features. She carefully curated foundations that matched her skin tone, concealers of the perfect shade, and lipsticks that flattered her. And when South Asian customers would come in and ask her for help, Arpita knew exactly which brands to recommend. One of those brands included Vasanti Cosmetics, an Indian-Canadian owned cosmetics line.
“You better believe I was like, ‘Oh, you need to buy this!’’ says Arpita. “Maybe I was kind of being a little biased but at the same time, their products were really good. I loved their foundations because they had the right undertone for me.”
As a darker-skinned South Asian woman who grew up between Chicago and India, Arpita isn’t a stranger to eurocentric beauty standards. She didn’t grow up with adequate South Asian representation in American media or have any South Asian American models to look up to. And she sure as hell didn’t have the right cosmetic products to make her feel beautiful — which is why she took it upon herself to assemble a caboodle, or cosmetics box, full of tried and true products that worked for her and other women of color.
“When I started working at the salon as a makeup artist, where we did the custom blending makeup, I built my kit and it was all Cose makeup from Mario Tricocci. That’s how I started,” says Arpita. “And I had everything from all the shades and colors because I was able to make them.”
Arpita’s caboodle was a labor of love: she experimented with numerous makeup brands, from Ulta to Urban Decay to IMAN Cosmetics, to assemble her beauty kit. Vasanti Cosmetics and IMAN Cosmetics are both owned by women of color, offering a wide range of shades to accommodate darker skin tones and undertones. However, both brands eventually parted ways with Ulta, limiting the store’s inventory of makeup that worked for South Asian people.
Ulta didn’t start carrying another South Asian-owned makeup brand until the release of Live Tinted in 2021, so long after the 1998 release of Vasanti Cosmetics that people credit Live Tinted as Ulta’s first South-Asian owned brand. In the meantime, Ulta offered makeup products from major brands that appropriated South Asian beauty products.
Dozens of brands, from Clinique to Estée Lauder to Shiseido, sell kajal eyeliners. Other brands like Sunday Riley and KORA Organics offer products with turmeric, an ingredient associated with traditional ayurvedic skincare. Countless hair care brands like Grow Gorgeous and DryBar sell products with amla oil, an ayurvedic ingredient derived from the Indian gooseberry. The problem doesn’t lie with the use of South Asian ingredients in beauty products — the problem is that none of those brands are owned by South Asians. These brands strip the cultural significance from those ingredients and market them towards white, American consumers, not only taking away from South Asian beauty, but perpetuating eurocentric beauty standards.
However, within the past two years, an increase in South Asian representation in American media and an ever growing South Asian community on TikTok has encouraged South Asian creatives to be more vocal about appropriation. Makeup artists like Arpita, along with beauty influencers and stylists, are making active efforts to not only reclaim South Asian beauty as their own, but to make South Asian beauty the standard in lieu of eurocentric beauty. They’re on the cusp of a potentially global change in the beauty industry. South Asian makeup brands like Live Tinted have the potential to be the next Fenty Beauty by Rihanna, a makeup geared towards women of color that’s worth an estimated $2.8 billion. But they’re not quite there yet.
Whereas people bully South Asian women for oiling their hair with coconut or amla oil, a beauty hack called “hair slugging” is viral on TikTok, encouraging people to slather their hair with oil to promote moisture and strength. When South Asian women wear bindis, they have to bear the brunt of countless racist jokes (i.e. “Are you a dot or feather Indian?”). But come a music festival like Coachella, white concert-goers wear bindis as chic fashion accessories, void of any cultural or religious significance. And while South Asian women are bullied into shaving their faces and waxing their eyebrows, it’s now considered trendy to have the thick, feathered eyebrow look.
The issue with the appropriation of South Asian beauty stems deeper than just the financial benefits that appropriators receive through their products. Appropriation contributes to a heightened sense of insecurity amongst South Asians about their natural appearance and feeds into the internalized racism that South Asians, especially South Asian women, experience in the United States. American media reflects this internalized racism within the South Asian community, becoming the face of what little representation that South Asians have in the country.
All of Mindy Kaling’s written protagonists, from Mindy Lahiri in The Mindy Project to Devi Vishwakumar in Never Have I Ever and Bela in The Sex Lives of College Girls, poke fun at being undesirable brown girls who have trouble with dating. In The Big Sick, Kumail Nanjiani plays the role of a Pakistani American son struggling to appease his desi family. He rejects romantic relationships with brown women, whom he considers unattractive and annoying, and instead ends up in a serious romantic relationship with a white woman. In Master of None, Aziz Ansari briefly dates brown women but only heavily pursues a white woman, encouraging the notion that brown women are not romantic interests in the same way that white women are.
South Asian women possess a tiny sliver of representation in American media, one that constantly assures them that they’ll never be as attractive or desirable as the white women they’re surrounded by. According to Dr. Meenakshi Gigi Durham, a professor of gender and media at the University of Iowa, the appropriation of South Asian beauty feeds into this cycle: South Asian beauty aligns to attractiveness on a white person and unattractiveness on a brown person, further alienating the brown woman as an “Other” unacceptable in western society.
“The U.S. mass media’s presentation of Indian femininity as a substructure for White female sexuality serves to legitimate the hegemonic construction of Western superiority over Asian culture,” said Dr. Durham in her 2001 paper, “Displaced Persons: Symbols of South Asian Femininity and the Returned Gaze in U.S. Media Culture.” “In a sense, it inverts the traditional objectification and exoticization of the Oriental female body — here, the South Asian body is not represented as sexually exotic; rather it is used to supplement White female sexuality through a system of pastiche.”
Dr. Durham also argues that giving white women the privilege of putting meaning into appropriated symbols of South Asian beauty undermines the relationship that Asian American women have with those symbols. While the appropriation of South Asian beauty trends is not novel, the increasing discussions by the South Asian community confronting appropriation are. The rapid growth of social media platforms like Instagram, TikTok, and Twitter has not only brought awareness to instances of appropriation, but has also inspired South Asians to reclaim South Asian beauty as their own, whether it’s through makeup tutorials, creating their own brands, or simply engaging in traditional South Asian beauty practices that they are mocked for.
TikTok’s ability to connect viewers through an algorithm and hashtags has been instrumental in fostering a large South Asian American online presence. The hashtags #browntok, #desitok, and #southasian have billions of views, making it easier for other South Asian creatives to network with each other. Thanks to TikTok’s algorithm, I was able to get in touch with beauty influencer Susanna Mollick and stylist Soni Kohli, in addition to Arpita.
Mollick, 27, is also a standup comedian and account executive based in New York City. She joined TikTok in April 2022, and has amassed over 4 million views since then. Mollick, who is of Indian and Bengali descent, talks about everything lifestyle-related: her videos range from fitness discussions, dating as a South Asian woman, and finding beauty products that work for her South Asian features. Kohli, who is a 25-year-old marketing manager and part-time stylist of Guyanese and Punjabi descent, has over 12,000 followers on TikTok and Instagram combined. She incorporates both Western and South Asian influences in her work, from intricate South Asian outfits like lehengas to accessories and jewelry. I first came across Kohli when she posted a TikTok demonstrating the clean girl aesthetic. The video featured a voiceover by simplyysri, a South Asian TikTokker with over a million followers, about the appropriation of the clean girl aesthetic.
For better or worse, the clean girl aesthetic had taken over New York City.
On a Friday night out in the East Village, I couldn’t believe the number of women I saw sporting the particular trend. The look permeated every space imaginable in the city: on the packed 6 train I took downtown, throughout my walk across 2nd Avenue, and in every corner of Sincerely, Ophelia, the bar I ended up in. For every colorful work of Basquiat scattered throughout the speakeasy, there was an equally beautiful person sporting the minimalist look. The clean girl aesthetic had become a go-to makeup look for all demographics because of its ease and simplicity. And each time I came across someone opting for the unmistakable “clean girl” look, I couldn’t help but feel a pang of indignation.
What many people don’t know about the clean girl aesthetic is that it was popularized by women of color, particularly black, desi, and latinx women. Instead of being deemed “clean girls,” however, women of color are considered quite the opposite when they sport the same exact look. They’re often called “dirty” and “ghetto.” South Asian women in particular are shamed for using the now so-called beauty “hacks” of slugging hair with oil, using two tones of lip liner, and wearing gold jewelry like nose rings or jhumkas. On a white woman, however, the look is considered the “clean girl aesthetic,” the latest trend comparable to the likes of Hailey Bieber and Kendall Jenner. People covet a look that South Asian women, including myself, spent decades trying to distance themselves from, and it’s not the first time that South Asian beauty is only considered attractive on a non-desi woman.
For many people, appropriation of the clean girl aesthetic may not seem like a big deal. But the practices of oiling hair, wearing a slicked back bun, and using minimal eye makeup like kajal have extremely significant cultural significance to South Asian women. Hair oiling is a beloved tradition of bonding: some of my fondest memories include sitting down with my younger sister to let our mother massage our hair with amla oil, just as her own mother had done for her. Hair itself holds a great deal of religious and spiritual significance in South Asia. Many women pull their hair into buns or braids, as loose hair can be associated with negative energy and bad luck. People wear kajal to ward off nazar, or the evil eye, sometimes applying a dot of kajal on their children’s foreheads as protection.
The clean girl aesthetic is the same makeup look that many of us saw our mothers and grandmothers wear before us. Witnessing the clean girl aesthetic being accepted only on white and white-passing women is not just a matter of justice for the brown girl and reclaiming what was stolen: it’s an issue of discrimination, one that bleeds into what is acceptable according to eurocentric beauty standards in the west. It’s also an issue of colorism, essentially demonstrating that brown women can never be beautiful in their traditional beauty practices while white women can. Marketing the clean girl aesthetic as a makeup look invented by white women for white women is harmful and has very tangible consequences — it encourages brown women to internalize their natural beauty as undesirable on them, while simultaneously upholding white beauty as the golden standard.
I wasn’t the only one who noticed the appropriation of South Asian beauty standards through the clean girl aesthetic. South Asian women took to TikTok to explain their frustration with the “trend.” Many of them shared anecdotes about how they were afraid to embody the clean girl aesthetic in fear of being bullied, the sting of seeing it become trendy on white women, and the regret of not embracing the clean girl aesthetic when they were younger if it meant bringing them closer to their South Asian heritage. In Kohli’s video, she goes through a clean girl makeup routine before sealing the look with a middle finger and kiss.
The clean girl aesthetic is the latest trend in appropriating South Asian beauty. It’s a perfect example of Dr. Durham’s point about appropriation aligning South Asian beauty with whiteness and attractiveness at the expense of brown women. Appropriation is a tale as old as time — wherever fashion is, appropriation follows. For many people, appropriation can feel inevitable.
Arpita, Mollick, and Kohli are actively using their platforms to rebel against white standards of beauty, in the hopes of realigning brown beauty with the brown folks that it belongs to. But such a task is hard to accomplish when appropriation is also linked to systemic power imbalances at play, internal racism, and poor representation of South Asian folks.
The appropriation of South Asian beauty in particular is rooted in a history of British colonization and western centrism. As the British influence in South Asia deepened, so did existing discriminatory notions around skin color and the caste system. South Asians began associating fairer skin with beauty, and darker skin with ugliness.
Hindustan Unilever is an Indian subsidiary of Unilever, a multinational British-owned company that specializes in consumer goods. Hindustan Unilever launched Fair & Lovely, a skin-lightening cosmetics brand that rakes in $317 million in annual revenue, in 1975. After facing years of intense backlash for its encouragement of colorism, Hindustan Unilever officially renamed the brand “Glow & Lovely” in 2020. Despite the rebranding, the brand did not eliminate the whitening nature of the products, which are still available in countries all over Asia and parts of Africa.
The makeup industry in India is not that much better than it is in the United States. Lakmé, one of India’s top makeup brands, is South Asian-owned. However, many of their products are often criticized for their poor quality and limited shade ranges. The darkest shade available online of their best-selling foundation, the Lakmé absolute mattreal skin natural mousse, is “Medium Toffee,” a darker tan color but not nearly dark enough to meet the needs of South Asian consumers with deep skin tones. Other top makeup brands in India include well-known western drugstore brands such as L’Oreal, Maybelline, and NYX, all of which provide a wider range of foundation shades but neglect to compensate for unique South Asian undertones.
South Asian women in both South Asia and the United States are struggling to find affordable makeup products that work for them. At the same time, they’re also dealing with constant instances of cultural appropriation, from bindis to henna and now the clean girl aesthetic. The cultural appropriation of South Asian beauty isn’t an injustice merely for the inequality between white and brown women. It’s an injustice because it brings up larger issues of colorism, internal racism, and the insistence of eurocentric beauty as the golden standard for attractiveness within the community.
When Mollick was 16 years old, her date lifted up her arm to compare to his arm. “You’re too dark for me to date,” he said. “My family would never approve of you.” Understandably, Mollick was baffled at her date’s rejection of her based on her skin color. But what really shocked her was that this criticism came from someone within her own community: both Mollick and her date were South Asian.
“There’s something wrong here and I don’t think it’s changing,” says Mollick. “We can advertise, we can put darker skinned girls on billboards, but I think within our own community there’s no change for me.”
Kohli was on a South Asian dance team when she was in middle school. One of her teammate’s mothers was heading a practice days before their performance.
“She was saying, ‘Oh, we can use this one bottle of foundation on all the girls except for her. She’s going to have to get her own.’ And she said it in such a negative way,” says Kohli. “Then it hit me: like one, that’s a bad thing. Like I should not be this color and I should match all the other girls for some reason. And two, I wasn’t fitting into specifically a South Asian standard.”
When Arpita was a child, she was constantly compared to her sister, who was lighter-skinned. Arpita used to wear her sister’s gray contacts to compensate for being a darker-skinned brown girl.
“I grew up with people being like, ‘That’s your sister? You guys are nothing alike,’” says Arpita. “Because eurocentric features were, especially in the time that I was growing up and included in our desi culture, everything. Light beauty was everything.”
The cultural appropriation of South Asian beauty may seem like a conflict between white and brown worlds at first glance. But the internal racism that Mollick, Kohli, and Arpita have all experienced within their South Asian communities demonstrates that eurocentric beauty standards are prevalent within the brown community as well — where it’s also the easiest to incite change, which is what the three influencers hope to accomplish with their online platforms.
The last two years have put South Asian women at the forefront of American media representation. The second season of Bridgerton starred Simone Ashley and Charithra Chandan as the Sharma sisters, marking one of the first times that two darker-skinned South Asian actresses were cast as leading romantic roles on an American television show. Ashley and Chandan captivated audiences not only with their beauty, but through the way they incorporated South Asian beauty into their daily lives.
In one scene, Kate Sharma lovingly applies oil to her younger sister’s hair. During Edwina Sharma’s wedding ceremony, her mother and sister apply haldi to her body, a paste made with turmeric, spices, and oil. While they don lavish European-style ball gowns, the sisters accessorize their outfits with jhumkas, traditional bell-shaped earrings. Edwina Sharma is deemed the diamond of the season — the most desirable bachelorette of the marriage season. The appearance of the Sharma sisters on Bridgerton is a turning point for much more than just South Asian visibility: their portrayal reminded South Asian women that they were beautiful just as they are, oiled hair, natural scent, slicked back hair, jhumkas and all.
Deepti on Love is Blind also inspired South Asian women with her deep sense of self-worth after her rejection of Shake at the altar. Family Karma, the first South Asian American reality television show, is a fan favorite because of its focus on positive South Asian families and friendships.
But with greater representation comes greater responsibility as well. While Mollick, Kohli, and Arpita aren’t afraid to talk about injustices towards the South Asian community, there’s only so much that they can do alone.
As Arpita and I weave through aisles of shimmering holiday eyeshadow palettes, anti-aging retinol creams, and fragrance gift sets, she tells me about the products she enjoys using as a makeup artist. Her favorite foundation is the Estée Lauder Double Wear because it has the perfect shade range for her. She says that NARS concealers are a staple in her kit, because of their affordability, range of shades, and versatility between daily and glam looks. She is a fan of the Kiehl’s Cannabis Sativa Seed Oil Herbal Concentrate Face Oil, which is one of her favorite products to use during the winter.
None of the products she mentions are owned by South Asians. Since there are barely any South Asian makeup and skincare brands to begin with, they’re products that Arpita has found to work over the years on South Asian features.
We stop by the edge of an aisle, where a few Live Tinted products are available. Since Ulta’s website offers a variety of Live Tinted products from bronzer to gloss and serums, I expect to find an entire section dedicated to the brand. Instead, only a disappointing number of lip glosses are tucked away between the Olaplex and Peach Slices brands, easy to miss if one isn’t paying attention.
“They don’t have everything,” Arpita says to me, disappointed. There’s barely any advertising or signage around the brand, and no way of knowing it was founded by a South Asian woman unless you already knew about it.
Despite my despondency, Arpita isn’t phased.
“You know what? I haven’t tried it but I believe in it because it’s made by a South Asian woman,” says Arpita. “And she’s a beautiful, dark-skinned South Asian woman so I will believe her word.”
We ask a sales associate if they have Urban Veda, a South Asian-owned skincare brand inspired by traditional ayurvedic beauty, in stock that day. She says she hasn’t heard of it, but looks it up in the system anyway.
“It’s online only,” she says. “They do have free shipping, though!”
If a South Asian customer was in-store shopping for South Asian-owned makeup and skincare brands, they wouldn’t find any save for a few lip glosses. And only if they were really looking. While the 12,000 square foot Ulta location didn’t dedicate any room to South Asian-owned brands, it did have an abundance of other products inspired by South Asian beauty: kajal eyeliner pencils, haldi or turmeric face masks, and bottles of hair oil.
I ask Arpita if she ever gets offended by the cultural appropriation of South Asian beauty products.
“I was really pissed in the beginning, but at the same time, look how much yoga is being appropriated. We’re calling ’em out, we’re doing it, but it’s not stopping,” says Arpita. “So I think the best way to do it is to get our people to go into that market and take it away.”
I expected to walk out of Ulta that day with at least a few South Asian-owned products, like the Live Tinted huestick multistick or Urban Veda soothing sandalwood & botanics day cream. Instead, I wait with Arpita as she checks out a cleanser by Peter Thomas Roth, a brand founded by a Hungarian entrepreneur of the same name.
“It’s going to be a lot of hard work, and I hate to say that. But I think the best thing is that a lot of people are seeing it. A lot of people’s eyes have been opened,” says Arpita. “It’s all about focus. Can’t get down. Like you see the bullshit happening, but you call ’em out and then you do something about it.”
