The Foundation of Beauty
Written by Tafi Mukunyadzi
Primer
Walk into a department store and you will find rows of counters laden with gems waiting, hoping to be gawked at, picked up, and touched. These jewels are lipsticks, eyeshadows, bronzers, concealers and blush live to be siren songs to women and men.
Beauty comes from within. We all have heard this, and most of us believe this. Despite its cliched nature, the sentiment still holds truth and power. There are people who say that women don’t need makeup to be beautiful and that is true, but cosmetics are like clothing; they help express who we are without us ever saying a word. If people seek out nice clothes to wear, then we can seek out nice makeup makeup to adorn our faces. What lives on the inside matters the most, but painting and experimenting with the prepped canvas that is your face can be an exciting fashion statement itself. That is the beauty of the beauty industry.
Color Palette
Honey Beige. Alabaster. Sand. Linen. Porcelain. Shell. Classic.
These are the names of skin colors and foundations made by top beauty brands like L’Oreal, Dolce & Gabbana, and Clinique. It’s easy to find many more descriptions that fall into the lighter side of the spectrum of foundation before you make your way into the land of Natural Tan, Sienna, Amber, Toffee, and Cafe (Beyonce and Halle Berry territory). So far, so good until you stumble upon Chocolate, Mocha, Ebony and…that’s it. Those three skin colors seems to be the limit for the range of women from Kerry Washington to Lupita Nyong’o.
Everyone wants to be the best edition of themselves when they face the world, but for women with darker skin, finding the tools to help them do so is a more difficult challenge than it should be. Of course if you are famous like Washington and Nyong’o, then having your beauty needs catered to is considerably easier than it is for the average woman.
For darker women-which here means Black, Indian, Middle Eastern, and Asian-finding makeup made for you can be a long process because many cosmetics brands do not have a wide range of products like they do for fairer tones.
When I see the latest foundation, it can be difficult to know whether or not the product was created with my complexion, or anyone else in my particular range, in mind. My Zimbabwean skin would not be considered light or dark, but I am closer on the spectrum to Gabrielle Union then Beyonce. Rarely do you see faces like mine splashed across television screens and the glossy pages of Vogue and InStyle magazines as a beauty brand ambassador.
Recently, Washington and Nyong’o have broken as the faces of Neutrogena and Lancome, respectively, due to their major success in Hollywood where many decisions about what is beautiful are made. While it may seem trivial to quibble about who gets paid hundreds of thousands if not millions,to hawk a product that gets washed off at the end of the day, the lack of representation for darker women in positions of beauty can have psychological implications.
By seeing what is not there, it can be easy to give people the impression of what they shouldn’t be or what is not desired. Lupita Nyong’o revealed in a 2014 speech at an Essence magazine luncheon, she revealed her desire as a child to have God make her beautiful by giving her a lighter skin tone until she saw model, Alek Wek, on the cover of a magazine. While Nyong’o was able to overcome her struggle with beauty, other women are still battling. Throughout Africa and India, skin lightening creams are ubiquitous on grocery store shelves with the latest product being Whitenicious. Promoted by Nigerian pop-singer Dencia, the cream has transformed her skin from deep mahogany to ghostly pale. Dencia not only flaunts her new lighter, whiter look, she also attacks other women like Nyong’o for embracing the skin they’re in. What we do not see is just as powerful, if not more that what we do see.
For many, foundation is that all important base that all great makeup routines are built upon. Whether it is powder or liquid or cream, foundation lays down a canvas on which artistry can be created. flawlessness. Before the boldness of color adorns the eyes and lips, there is the subtle transformation of the skin into a better version of itself. So why can’t we all be perfect?
At the Essence Smart Beauty Panel in 2009, celebrity makeup artist Sam Fine referred to market research stating “African-American women spend $7.5 billion annually on beauty products, but shell out 80 percent more money on cosmetics and twice as much on skin care products than the general market.” With black females spending so much money, it would seem that the beauty industry is doing quite well with this particular section of the population.
Despite the amount of cosmetics produced per year, little of the products cater to African-American needs in the way they are catered to other races. It is not uncommon to hear a black woman buying two different foundations to mix together so that she can find her perfect shade. It is not uncommon to hear the grumblings of the lack of nude lipsticks for women of color. It’s not unusual to find women of color reaching out to one another for opinions about a beauty or skincare product because commercials and press never make it clear if the merchandise is intended for them or not.
According to the Global Beauty Care Products Industry 2012–2017: Trend, Profit, and Forecast report, by the year 2017 the beauty industry will have reached revenue estimated to be $265 billion. Darker women have the money and are willing to spend the it, yet they feel that they are being ignored.
With a few cosmetic companies like MAC, Lancome, Covergirl, and Becca understanding more the economics behind tapping into the minority market, other companies may not feel the need to expand their product lines. To fill the void left by major cosmetics brands, several companies that cater to the unique needs of darker women have been established by those who are a part of that demographic.
Fashion Fair, the world’s largest Black-owned cosmetics company, was established in 1973 by Eunice W. Johnson, after observing that black models of the day were mixing foundations to create the shade that was right for them. Supermodel, Iman, created her eponymous beauty brand in 1994, after spending much of her modeling career mixing her own shades of makeup because the hired makeup artists at fashion shows didn’t know what to do with her complexion.
Both Fashion Fair and Iman Cosmetics have grown to be critically acclaimed by women of color, but they have struggled to reach the heights of mega brands like Clinique and Nars. Fashion Fair can only be found online and in department stores like Macy’s and Dillard’s where it is usually the smallest beauty counter in the store. Iman’s offerings, also sold online, are relegated to the drug store where consumers usually can’t test products before they make a purchase. In some drugstores, you’ll find makeup collections and hair care items catered to minorities segregated from the rest of the products. Sometimes those sections will bear the label “Ethnic” above them.
Despite being an established business within the African-American community for over forty years, it seems that Fashion Fair has seen its clientele decline in the last decade because it failed to adapt to a new generation of customers who flock to brands that are young and fresh like MAC or are categorized as luxury like Estee Lauder.
Why would women of color turn to other businesses when there are companies that cater specifically to them?
Because no one wants to be the other.
The decision of who gets what products is based on the combination of what corporations believe will generate dollars and what they think the people want to see. Minorities do not see themselves as standard bearers of beauty because in the minds of the powers that be, they are the other. As Edward Said so eloquently explained in Orientalism, the other has been relegated to that position because it as a collective has been misunderstood, myths about it have been perpetuated, and there has been a longstanding struggle to explore it. Deep-rooted ideas and misconceptions about what the other is like may subconsciously inform the decisions we all make in our lives, and the creators of makeup and skincare products are not immune to those biases.
Finishing Touches
Due to the awkward state of affairs between women of color and cosmetics companies, there is a new crop of entrepreneurs like Jodie Patterson to make sure that women of all ethnicities are taken care of.
Patterson, an African-American woman, is the co-founder of the Oprah-approved e-commerce store, DOOBOP. The businesswoman created DOOBOP to be a site that curates makeup, skincare, and haircare products for a diverse clientele because she believes that, “beauty is not ethnic.”
She was inspired to do something about an “industry that neglects darker women and textured (see:hair) women” because in her skincare store in lower Manhattan, Patterson would see “customers who were varied and shopped based on need, not ethnicity.”
She believes that the tone-deafness of brands is because “the industry is made up of companies. Companies are not people, ” and they operate under the false assumption that “if they just put Beyonce on the cover, they think we’ll buy.”
Cosmetics companies could take advantage of that if they decide to see that women of color are buying products- a lot of them- but they are not buying into the idea that their beauty should be limited.
