NUDEMETER’s Newest Home: Spktrm Beauty
Jasmine Glass used to sit in front of the mirror picking apart her flaws. Begrudgingly she would layer on makeup to hide what society told her was ugly; the beauty industry’s unreasonable expectations pressured her into feeling like she had to get perfectly dolled up just to leave the house. Since then, Glass has grown to be more comfortable with herself and now wants to spread that confidence. With the launch of her inclusive beauty brand Spktrm Beauty, Glass hopes that people can foster more positive relationships with makeup in spite of the beauty industry’s fear-based marketing and outdated beauty standards.
“I hope that people who are currently experiencing lack of self-worth or lower self-esteem due to existing beauty ideals will begin to feel freed from those negative thought patterns and will come to find more self-acceptance,” Glass says.
Glass founded Spktrm Beauty to reshape the industry into a more inclusive and transparent place. While working on her beauty and fashion publication GLASSbook, she became more aware of the issues surrounding visibility and diversity. To create a more representative community, she began publishing more body-positive and diverse content featuring a wide variety of ethnicities, genders, sizes, and abilities. Glass created Spktrm Beauty to cater to the values that were becoming increasingly important to her; she was dedicated to promoting visibility through her brand, even when her network of photographers dwindled to two because she would include only retouch-free images in her publication. On its website, Spktrm Beauty declares itself “A New Generation of Beauty,” noting that the brand was created “upon a foundation of inclusiveness of race, age, ability, gender, and all forms of beauty.”
“I personally, I see beauty, you know, everywhere that I look, and I just see this great divide in the beauty that has been celebrated over and over again by conventional beauty brands for so many years now,” Glass says, “I really just wanted to step up to the plate and start shining a spotlight on a much broader representation of beauty and take that opportunity to provide representation for a lot of people who have been excluded from not just the beauty industry, but advertising in general.”
Dedicated to this mission, Spktrm Beauty released 50 shades of paraben-free, cruelty-free foundation in the brand’s very first launch.
“I just figured starting with a product that seems to be in high demand and not available for a lot of people would be a good way to kind of come out the gate and assist people who were unable to find equal access to products at other places,” Glass says, explaining her brand’s choice to release foundation first.
Each shade of foundation is named after the first person to purchase it during the company’s initial e-commerce launch. According to Glass, not only does this branding show love to the company’s first supporters, but it also strengthens the personal connection between the brand and its consumers. She similarly mentioned that as a queer white woman, she always wants to be mindful in the ways she approaches the brand and its marketing.
“I need to be especially diligent in assessing every move that I make to ensure that I'm not unintentionally harming people that I created this brand to support,” she notes, “I try to stay away from making the same decisions as many who came before me.”
On top of the company’s extensive shade range and its personalized naming system, Glass continues to build her company, always aiming to be progressive and create positive experiences with makeup. To do this, Spktrm Beauty is featuring NUDEST’s very own NUDEMETER on its website to help customers with shade matching, ensuring that each person is purchasing the right shade.
“For me, it feels very much like NUDEMETER is the future of the beauty industry,” Glass remarks, “Aligning tech and beauty is going to create a much more user-friendly e-commerce experience for just about everybody--and that’s what I’m really interested in.”
To Glass, the key to cementing this essential unification between beauty and technology in the industry’s future is to make people aware that they can be fully and accurately served online. NUDEST’s shade matching technology helps eliminate the uncertainty of getting the wrong shade and wasting your money, and Spktrm Beauty’s use of photos of retouch-free models allows customers to be sure of how the product will really look without leaving the comfort of their home.
Beyond working with NUDEST, Spktrm Beauty has continued to push for inclusivity in many other ways. Their campaign photos feature men, women, trans and non-binary people who are pimpled, dimpled, and freckled with skin tones ranging from light to dark and every shade in between. These models aren’t afraid to be vulnerable and have built wonderful communities of positivity on Instagram, defying the potential toxicity of social media. They’re people who may fall outside the traditional beauty standards, but are beautiful nonetheless.
Person with green braids smiling while wearing Spktrm Beauty’s foundation.
A person with prominent freckles wearing Spktrm Beauty’s foundation.
Spktrm Beauty is the first beauty brand to completely ban retouching of their models in social media posts. When Glass reads the comments on the company’s Instagram and sees all the positive feedback regarding this inclusively creative choice, she can’t believe that other brands haven’t done the same.
“I was like, wow, that certainly will be good for people like me who are a little bit tired of not knowing what’s real anymore,” Glass remarks. The retouched photos that saturate our newsfeeds remind her of when she sat in front of the mirror hating herself for not looking like all the advertisements, “You know, I was just tired of feeling less than just looking like a normal person my age, and I think a lot of people echo that sentiment.”
Spktrm Beauty’s photos physically represent the meaning of their brand’s name. Inspired by a video featuring Bill Nye the Science Guy talking about the sexuality and gender spectrum, Glass worked to implement the spectrum’s two-pronged focus into her brand, and thus the name Spktrm Beauty was created. The world isn’t binary, and Spktrm Beauty’s main goal is to highlight beauty across a spectrum of all skin types and shades.
“Anyone who is tired of feeling the pressure to conform to a rigid, unattainable beauty standard will likely appreciate our approach,” Glass explains, “We're very much about celebrating who you are and accepting your own beauty.”
The brand she has built is one she thinks all people want and need to see in the beauty industry. Working alongside NUDEST and other beauty companies to create positive change and adopt more inclusive practices, Glass hopes that Spktrm Beauty is recognized as a beauty brand whose top priority is the overall care and well-being of its consumers.
“Through my journey of self-acceptance--which I’m still on--my relationship with makeup has changed so much for the better,” she explains, “Where sitting in front of the mirror used to be almost a traumatic experience because I focused on my perceived flaws, I now feel comfortable looking at myself and what I wake up with in the morning. That’s something I really want for people who discover Spktrm Beauty [to feel] as well.”
