Women of Color in the Beauty Industry

When Fenty Beauty dropped in September of 2017 during New York Fashion Week, I recall the buzz on my social media. From the girls with dark chocolate skin, to girls with porcelain skin like myself, they were itching to get their hands on the “Bad Girl’s” complexion products. Walking into any Sephora that month, you’d see darker-skinned girls picking out their shade, grins lighting up their faces, finally seeing their shade in mainstream makeup lines. But why has it taken so long in the 6,000 years cosmetics have been around for women of color to start seeing their shades on the racks?

Is Fenty the first cosmetics brand to release extended shades? Of course not; many brands such as Estee Lauder or Makeup Forever rave about their shade lines on their platforms. But what do these brands have in common? They’re high end, expensive brands usually only carried in Sephora. And you don’t have to be a makeup artist to know Sephora equals an empty wallet and a bag with about two products in it. Estee Lauder, a brand with 41 shades (mostly beige but you didn’t hear that from me) retails for about $41 for 1 ounce of product. Makeup Forever retails for about $43 for 1.01 ounce. I’m sure minimum wage workers and CEO alike aren’t ready to fork over that much money for less than a Pocketbac hand sanitizer worth of makeup. On the other hand, girls of light complexions can most likely walk into a CVS, select a shade, and walk out satisfied and having only spent $10 to $15. So where are the affordable products for women of color? When will our sisters that are darker than eggshell be able to spend $8 on a properly matching foundation?

Moving the topic of conversation back to Fenty Beauty, everyone’s favorite complexion products are having a trickle down effect. Drug stores still leave something to be desired, but the Maybelline Fit Me foundation retails for $8 and has an impressive 32 color shade range. And since Fenty’s release, some less expensive brands have dropped hints at expanding their shade range. The more big, mainstream brands see that women of color DO exist, and their shades sell out when in stock, the more likely it will be to see darker shades at the local Rite-Aide.

“Beauty” and the beauty industry has been set to a very specific-looking woman. Light skin, blonde hair, blue eyes. Even now, where black power and self love have appeared to come so far, when is the last time you saw a woman of color being portrayed as an image of beauty? No little girl should ever grow up feeling like if they were a different color, they would look better. Since the 40s, women have been encouraged to lighten their skin, thus making them prettier. Skin bleaching products have been on the market for years, and while they’re less popular in the States, the skin lightening industry was expected to have reached a staggering $10 billion by 2015 in countries such as India, Africa, and Pakistan. Perhaps if girls were taught from a young age that their skin tone, their natural hair, and their mannerisms are beautiful just the way they are, we would not see these products on the shelves at all.

The beauty industry has been teaching women to look different, to change themselves, for decades. And nowhere is this struggle more apparent than in the hearts and eyes of women of color. People are demanding change. It shouldn’t be a rare occurrence for a brand to release diverse shades. It should never, ever be a rare occurrence for women to embrace who they are and love themselves unconditionally. End of story. Period.